ANNA—[Angrily assertive.] Yes, that's yust what I do mean! You been doing the same thing all your life, picking up a new girl in every port. How're you any better than I was?
BURKE—[Thoroughly exasperated.] Is it no shame you have at all? I'm a fool to be wasting talk on you and you hardened in badness. I'll go out of this and lave you alone forever. [He starts for the door—then stops to turn on her furiously] And I suppose 'tis the same lies you told them all before that you told to me?
ANNA—[Indignantly.] That's a lie! I never did!
BURKE—[Miserably.] You'd be saying that, anyway.
ANNA—[Forcibly, with growing intensity.] Are you trying to accuse me—of being in love—really in love—with them?
BURKE—I'm thinking you were, surely.
ANNA—[Furiously, as if this were the last insult—advancing on him threateningly] You mutt, you! I've stood enough from you. Don't you dare. [With scornful bitterness.] Love 'em! Oh, my Gawd! You damn thick-head! Love 'em? [Savagely.] I hated 'em, I tell you! Hated 'em, hated 'em, hated 'em! And may Gawd strike me dead this minute and my mother, too, if she was alive, if I ain't telling you the honest truth!
BURKE—[Immensely pleased by her vehemence—a light beginning to break over his face—but still uncertain, torn between doubt and the desire to believe—helplessly.] If I could only be believing you now!
ANNA—[Distractedly.] Oh, what's the use? What's the use of me talking? What's the use of anything? [Pleadingly.] Oh, Mat, you mustn't think that for a second! You mustn't! Think all the other bad about me you want to, and I won't kick, 'cause you've a right to. But don't think that! [On the point of tears.] I couldn't bear it! It'd be yust too much to know you was going away where I'd never see you again—thinking that about me!
BURKE—[After an inward struggle—tensely—forcing out the words with difficulty.] If I was believing—that you'd never had love for any other man in the world but me—I could be forgetting the rest, maybe.