Touch and Go: A Play in Three Acts

by D. H. Lawrence

ANABEL. Do you want to be with me for ever?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Sure?

GERALD. Quite sure.

ANABEL. Why are you so cool about it?

GERALD. I'm not. I'm only sure—which you are not.

ANABEL. Yes, I am—I WANT to be married to you.

GERALD. I know you want me to want you to be married to me. But whether off your own bat you have a positive desire that way, I'm not sure. You keep something back—some sort of female reservation—like a dagger up your sleeve. You want to see me in transports of love for you.

ANABEL. How can you say so? There—you see—there—this is the man that pretends to love me, and then says I keep a dagger up my sleeve. You liar!

GERALD. I do love you—and you do keep a dagger up your sleeve—some devilish little female reservation which spies at me from a distance, in your soul, all the time, as if I were an enemy.