MORELL. Hardly in the same way, I think.
MARCHBANKS (scrambling up—eagerly). The very, very, VERY same way. I have been playing the good man just like you. When you began your heroics about leaving me here with Candida—
MORELL (involuntarily). Candida?
MARCHBANKS. Oh, yes: I've got that far. Heroics are infectious: I caught the disease from you. I swore not to say a word in your absence that I would not have said a month ago in your presence.
MORELL. Did you keep your oath?
MARCHBANKS. (suddenly perching himself grotesquely on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her—reading my own poems—anybody's poems—to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, and how uncomfortable! Then—
MORELL (steadily controlling his suspense). Then?
MARCHBANKS (prosaically slipping down into a quite ordinary attitude in the chair). Then she couldn't bear being read to any longer.
MORELL. And you approached the gate of Heaven at last?
MARCHBANKS. Yes.