JEAN. If you're saying that it doesn't concern me, you're saying--(_her lip trembles_)--that _you_ don't concern me. STONOR (_commanding his temper with difficulty_). In those days I--I was absolutely dependent on my father. JEAN. Why, you must have been thirty, Geoffrey. STONOR (_slight pause_). What? Oh--thereabouts. JEAN. And everybody says you're so clever. STONOR. Well, everybody's mistaken. JEAN (_drawing nearer_). It must have been terribly hard---- (STONOR _turns towards her._) for you both-- (_He arrests his movement and stands stonily._) that a man like you shouldn't have had the freedom that even the lowest seem to have. STONOR. Freedom? JEAN. To marry the woman they choose. STONOR. She didn't break off our relations because I couldn't marry her. JEAN. Why was it, then? STONOR. You're too young to discuss such a story. (_Half turns away._) JEAN. I'm not so young as she was when---- STONOR (_wheeling upon her_). Very well, then, if you will have it! The truth is, it didn't seem to weigh upon her, as it seems to on you, that I wasn't able to marry her. JEAN. Why are you so sure of that? STONOR. Because she didn't so much as hint such a thing when she wrote that she meant to break off the--the---- JEAN. What made her write like that? STONOR (_with suppressed rage_). Why _will_ you go on talking of what's so long over and ended? JEAN. What reason did she give? STONOR. If your curiosity has so got the upper hand--_ask her_. JEAN (_her eyes upon him_). You're afraid to tell me. STONOR (_putting pressure on himself to answer quietly_). I still hoped--at _that_ time--to win my father over. She blamed me because (_goes to window and looks blindly out and speaks in a low tone_) if the child had lived it wouldn't have been possible to get my father to--to overlook it. JEAN (_faintly_). You wanted it _overlooked_? I don't underst---- STONOR (_turning passionately back to her_). Of course you don't. (_He seizes her hand and tries to draw her to him._) If you did, you wouldn't be the beautiful, tender, innocent child you are---- JEAN (_has withdrawn her hand and shrunk from him with an impulse--slight as is its expression--so tragically eloquent, that fear for the first time catches hold of him_). I am glad you didn't mean to desert her, Geoffrey. It wasn't your fault after all--only some misunderstanding that can be cleared up. STONOR. _Cleared up?_ JEAN. Yes. Cleared up. STONOR (_aghast_). You aren't thinking that this miserable old affair I'd as good as forgotten---- JEAN (_in a horror-struck whisper, with a glance at the door which he doesn't see_). _Forgotten!_ STONOR. No, no. I don't mean exactly forgotten. But you're torturing me so I don't know what I'm saying. (_He goes closer._) You aren't--Jean! you--you aren't going to let it come between you and me!