Perhaps the whole town’s wrong? Your brother isn’t in prison? Never been in prison? You’re not the sister of--of your brother? CLARA. Leonard, I’m my father’s daughter. I don’t come as the sister of an innocent man whose name has already been cleared--that’s my brother;--nor as a girl who shudders at unmerited shame--for (_in a low voice_) I shudder more at you--I come in the name of the old man who gave me life. LEONARD. What do you want? CLARA. Can you ask? Oh, if only I were free to go! My father will cut his throat if I--marry me! LEONARD. Your father---- CLARA. He has sworn it. Marry me! LEONARD. Hand and throat are close cousins. They won’t damage one another. Don’t worry about that. CLARA. He has sworn it.--Marry me, and then kill me--and I’ll thank you more for the one than the other. LEONARD. Do you love me? Did your heart tell you to come? Am I the man without whom you can’t live or die? CLARA. Answer that yourself. LEONARD. Can you swear that you love me? That you love me as a girl should love the man who is to be bound to her for life? CLARA. No, I can’t swear that. But this I can swear. That whether I love you or not, you shall never know. I’ll serve you, I’ll work for you. You don’t need to feed me. I’ll keep myself. I’ll sew and spin in the night-time for other people. I’ll go hungry if I’ve no work to do. I’ll eat my own flesh rather than go to my father and let him notice anything. If you strike me because your dog isn’t handy, or you’ve done away with him, I’ll swallow my own tongue rather than utter a sound that could let it out to the neighbours. I can’t promise you that my skin shall not show the marks of your lash, but I’ll lie about it, I’ll say that I ran my head against the cupboard or that the floor was too much polished and I slipped on it. I’ll do it before anybody has time to ask me where the blue marks came from. Marry me--I shan’t live long. And if it lasts too long for you, and you can’t afford to divorce me, buy some poison at the chemist’s and put it down as if it were for the rats. I’ll take it without even a sign from you, and when I’m dying I’ll tell the neighbours I thought it was crushed sugar. LEONARD. Well, if you expect me to do all that, you won’t be surprised if I say no. CLARA.