Philip: Do you mean to sit there and tell me that all this arose simply because they said I had taken part in a drunken orgy?
Ann: How could I let them say that?
Philip: Good God, do you think anyone cares a damn? That that sort of thing doesn’t happen to everyone?
Ann: I think that it matters very much for a man to fail his chief when he has trusted him, relied on him.
Philip: And if I am with you, am I not equally failing my chief who has trusted me, relied on me? Doesn’t that matter?
Ann: I think that matters too. But somehow, love is a different world—far away beyond our ordinary lives. It makes everything else seem so distant and irrelevant.
Philip: Well, I may as well explain to you that to me love is an appetite like any other appetite. It is no better and no worse than drink, and one woman is no better and no worse than another. At least I used to think that. But now I realize that a temporary adventure is nothing to being entangled in the octopus grip of a love affair with a virtuous woman.
[Ann makes a gesture.
If you want to have children, marry. If you want to love you will have to pay the bill, but see that it is a cash transaction. I meet you—a good woman, a beautiful woman, a charming woman. I am attracted to you as hundreds of men have been before me. And then, suddenly you present me with your virtue. I am flattered, naturally, I take what the gods give me. Who wouldn’t? And then, what happens? The woman who used to believe in virtue, believes in love. A strange flaming thing this love, before which everything is sacrificed, pride, discretion, the conventions, reputation. You are blinded by it. What am I to do? I tell you things, I warn you, I try to escape. But everything I say is like describing objects to someone who can’t see. Gently, serenely, you laugh the foundations of your life away as if they were irrelevant absurdities.
Ann (in agony): Oh....