trebell. [Shaking his head, unmoved.] My dear sister . . I should be bored to death. The life contemplative and peripatetic would literally bore me into a living death.
frances. [Letting it be a fairy tale.] Is your mother the Wide World nothing to you? Can't you open your heart like a child again?
trebell. No, neither to the beauty of Nature nor the particular human animals that are always called a part of it. I don't even see them with your eyes. I'm a son of the anger of Man at men's foolishness, and unless I've that to feed upon . . .! [Now he looks at her, as if for the first time wanting to explain himself, and his voice changes.] Don't you know that when a man cuts himself shaving, he swears? When he loses a seat in the Cabinet he turns inward for comfort . . and if he only finds there a spirit which should have been born, but is dead . . what's to be done then?
frances. [In a whisper.] You mustn't think of that woman. . .
trebell. I've reasoned my way through life. . .
frances. I see how awful it is to have the double blow fall.
trebell. [The wave of his agony rising again.] But here's something in me which no knowledge touches . . some feeling . . some power which should be the beginning of new strength. But it has been killed in me unborn before I had learnt to understand . . and that's killing me.
frances. [Crying out.] Why . . why did no woman teach you to be gentle? Why did you never believe in any woman? Perhaps even I am to blame. . .
trebell. The little fool, the little fool . . why did she kill my child? What did it matter what I thought her? We were committed together to that one thing. Do you think I didn't know that I was heartless and that she was socially in the wrong? But what did Nature care for that? And Nature has broken us.
frances. [Clinging to him as he beats the air.] Not you. She's dead, poor girl . . but not you.