SCENE IV.—A room. Enter Belle and Scrooge's former self, at twenty-five years of age.
Scro. It is Belle, as sure as I am a living sinner.
Belle. It matters little to you. To you very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.
Young S. What idol has displaced you?
Belle. A golden one.
Young S. This is the even-handed dealing of the world. There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity, as the pursuit of wealth.
Belle. You fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion gain, engrosses you. Have I not?
Young S. What then? Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed toward you, (She shakes her head.) Am I?
Belle. Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made you were another man.
Young S. I was a boy.