AGNES. I will not.
SYBIL. He has an old mother—
AGNES. Poor woman!
SYBIL. And remember, you took him away—!
AGNES. I!
SYBIL. Practically you did—with your tender nursing and sweet compassion. Isn't it straining a point—to shirk bringing him back?
AGNES. [Rising.] I did not take him from you. You—you sent him to me.
SYBIL. Ho, yes! That tale has been dinned into your ears often enough, I can quite believe. I sent him to you—my coldness, heartlessness, selfishness sent him to you. The unsympathetic wife—eh? Yes, but you didn't put yourself to the trouble of asking for my version of the story before you mingled your woes with his. [AGNES faces her suddenly.] You know him now. Have I been altogether to blame, do you still think? Unsympathetic! Because I've so often had to tighten my lips, and stare blankly over his shoulder, to stop myself crying out in weariness of his vanity and pettiness? Cruel! Because, occasionally, patience becomes exhausted at the mere contemplation of a man so self-absorbed? Why, you married miserably, the Duke of St. Olpherts tells us! Before you made yourself my husband's champion and protector, why didn't you let your experience speak a word for me? [AGNES quickly turns away and sits upon the settee, her hands to her brow.] However, I didn't come here to revile you. [Standing by her.] They say that you're a strange woman—not the sort of woman one generally finds doing such things as you have done; a woman with odd ideas. I hear—oh, I'm willing to believe it!—that there's good in you. [AGNES breaks into a low peal of hysterical laughter.]
AGNES. Who tells you—that?
SYBIL. The Duke.