AGNES. Oh, yes, it changed me.
GERTRUDE. You spoke of yourself just now as a widow. He's dead?
AGNES. He died on our wedding day—the eighth anniversary.
GERTRUDE. You were free then—free to begin again.
AGNES. Eh? [Looking at GERTRUDE.] Yes; but you don't begin to believe all over again. [She gathers up the stalks of the flowers from the tray, and, kneeling, crams them into the stove.] However, this is an old story. I'm thirty-three now.
GERTRUDE. [Hesitatingly.] You and Mr. Cleeve—?
AGNES. We've known each other since last November—no longer. Six years of my life unaccounted for, eh? Well, for a couple of years or so I was lecturing.
GERTRUDE. Lecturing?
AGNES. Ah, I'd become an out-and-out child of my father by that time— spouting, perhaps you'd call it, standing on the identical little platforms he used to speak from, lashing abuses with my tongue as he had done. Oh, and I was fond, too, of warning women.
GERTRUDE. Against what?