ANN: Happy? TIM: My love for you doesn’t make me unhappy any more. It has become a sort of religion. ANN: Tim—— TIM: My reverent adoration is without requests and without claims. I don’t want you to step down off your altar, dearest. ANN: Tim, you frighten me. TIM: And they think you are cold or conventional because your wonderful goodness is a steady light, because you know nothing of ugly flares of passion, which first blind you and then leave everything dark. ANN (_shutting her eyes_): Oh! TIM: It is so difficult not to be selfish when one loves. It seems somehow to make everything so personal. ANN (_looking into distance_): Yes. TIM: You don’t say “How divinely she walks,” but “Is she coming straight to me?” ANN: Yes. TIM: There is a feverish unreality about everything, so that you feel that even physical pain would soothe your nerves. ANN (_under her breath_): I know. TIM (_has not heard her_): You want to be cruel ... or violent ... or something.... ANN: Tim dear, you have never wanted to hurt a fly in your life. TIM: Oh yes, I have. When I first fell in love with you, I wanted to kill Ninian. ANN: And now? TIM: Now I just want to have him killed—not by my own hand, but impersonally. You see, Ann, you have taught me that there is something unblessed about the things you do for your own sake. Does it sound priggish? I mean that now I quite honestly don’t think about how things will affect me, but how they will affect you. It has made me so happy. ANN: I don’t deserve it. TIM: I don’t mean that I don’t want you with every breath of my body; the whole of me is yearning for you all the time. I feel a burning wave sweep through me whenever you walk into the room. When I hear your name suddenly, it makes me feel sick and giddy and excited. If I meet you unexpectedly I am like a nervous actor in the wings, waiting for his cue. ANN: Tim.... TIM: Does it worry you if I talk like that? I am not trying to appeal to you, or fuss you, dearest. God knows I’m not. ANN: I know, dear. [_She gives him her hand._ TIM (_kissing it_): Sometimes I have wondered what it would feel like to kiss you—just once. ANN (_putting her face up to him_): There. TIM: No. I’m not going to take advantage of your generosity. It would be sacrilege. I am not an irreverent worshipper nor an ungrateful one. I am proud to be allowed to kiss your finger tips. ANN (_bitterly_): Why is it the selfish people who get so much out of one? Why do we go on pouring ourselves into shallow streams? Why can’t we love the people we want to love? TIM (_simply_): I do. ANN: Tim—I wish you didn’t think such wonderful things about me. Some day you will be so shocked. So surprised. TIM: Never. ANN: You will find out that I am not a saint at all. TIM: I know you are a saint. Nothing can alter that. ANN: You have created me in your own image, giving me all your own lovely qualities. They are a divine gift, Tim. Thank you for them.