FRANCES. My dear, listen to me for a little. Consider that as a sorrow and put it behind you. And think now ... whatever love there may be between us has neither hatred nor jealousy in it, has it, Henry? Since I'm not a mistress or a friend but just the likest fellow-creature to you ... perhaps. TREBELL. [_Putting out his hand for hers._] Yes, my sister. What I've wanted to feel for vague humanity has been what I should have felt for you ... if you'd ever made a single demand on me. _She puts her arms round him; able to speak._ FRANCES. Let's go away somewhere ... I'll make demands. I need refreshing as much as you. My joy of life has been withered in me ... oh, for a long time now. We must kiss the earth again ... take interest in common things, common people. There's so much of the world we don't know. There's air to breathe everywhere. Think of the flowers in a Tyrol valley in the early spring. One can walk for days, not hurrying, as soon as the passes are open. And the people are kind. There's Italy ... there's Russia full of simple folk. When we've learned to be friends with them we shall both feel so much better. TREBELL. [_Shaking his head, unmoved._] My dear sister ... I should be bored to death. The life contemplative and peripatetic would literally bore me into a living death. FRANCES. [_Letting it be a fairy tale._] Is your mother the Wide World nothing to you? Can't you open your heart like a child again? TREBELL. No, neither to the beauty of Nature nor the particular human animals that are always called a part of it. I don't even see them with your eyes. I'm a son of the anger of Man at men's foolishness, and unless I've that to feed upon...! [_Now he looks at her, as if for the first time wanting to explain himself, and his voice changes._] Don't you know that when a man cuts himself shaving, he swears? When he loses a seat in the Cabinet he turns inward for comfort ... and if he only finds there a spirit which should have been born, but is dead ... what's to be done then? FRANCES. [_In a whisper._] You mustn't think of that woman.... TREBELL. I've reasoned my way through life.... FRANCES. I see how awful it is to have the double blow fall. TREBELL. [_The wave of his agony rising again._] But here's something in me which no knowledge touches ... some feeling ... some power which should be the beginning of new strength. But it has been killed in me unborn before I had learnt to understand ... and that's killing me. FRANCES. [_Crying out._] Why ... why did no woman teach you to be gentle? Why did you never believe in any woman? Perhaps even I am to blame.... TREBELL. The little fool, the little fool ... why did she kill my child? What did it matter what I thought her? We were committed together to that one thing. Do you think I didn't know that I was heartless and that she was socially in the wrong? But what did Nature care for that? And Nature has broken us.