GERALD. Slightly sanctimonious. I think I liked you better before. I don't think I like you with this touch of aureole. People seem to me so horribly self-satisfied when they get a change of heart--they take such a fearful lot of credit to themselves on the strength of it. ANABEL. I don't think I do.--Do you feel no different, Gerald? GERALD. Radically, I can't say I do. I feel very much more INdifferent. ANABEL. What to? GERALD. Everything. ANABEL. You're still angry--that's what it is. GERALD. Oh, yes, I'm angry. But that is part of my normal state. ANABEL. Why are you angry? GERALD. Is there any reason why I shouldn't be angry? I'm angry because you treated me--well, so impudently, really--clearing out and leaving one to whistle to the empty walls. ANABEL. Don't you think it was time I cleared out, when you became so violent, and really dangerous, really like a madman? GERALD. Time or not time, you went--you disappeared and left us high and dry--and I am still angry.--But I'm not only angry about that. I'm angry with the colliers, with Labour for its low-down impudence--and I'm angry with father for being so ill--and I'm angry with mother for looking such a hopeless thing--and I'm angry with Oliver because he thinks so much--- ANABEL. And what are you angry with yourself for? GERALD. I'm angry with myself for being myself--I always was that. I was always a curse to myself. ANABEL. And that's why you curse others so much? GERALD. You talk as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. ANABEL. You see, Gerald, there has to be a change. You'll have to change. GERALD. Change of heart?--Well, it won't be to get softer, Anabel. ANABEL. You needn't be softer. But you can be quieter, more sane even. There ought to be some part of you that can be quiet and apart from the world, some part that can be happy and gentle. GERALD. Well, there isn't. I don't pretend to be able to extricate a soft sort of John Halifax, Gentleman, out of the machine I'm mixed up in, and keep him to gladden the connubial hearth. I'm angry, and I'm angry right through, and I'm not going to play bo-peep with myself, pretending not to be. ANABEL. Nobody asks you to. But is there no part of you that can be a bit gentle and peaceful and happy with a woman? GERALD. No, there isn't.--I'm not going to smug with you--no, not I. You're smug in your coming back. You feel virtuous, and expect me to rise to it. I won't. ANABEL. Then I'd better have stayed away. GERALD. If you want me to virtuise and smug with you, you had. ANABEL. What DO you want, then? GERALD. I don't know. I know I don't want THAT. ANABEL. Oh, very well. (Goes to the piano; begins to play.) (Enter MRS. BARLOW.) GERALD. Hello, mother! Father HAS gone to bed. MRS. BARLOW. Oh, I thought he was down here talking. You two alone? GERALD. With the piano for chaperone, mother. MRS. BARLOW. That's more than I gave you credit for. I haven't come to chaperone you either, Gerald.