Amy. But let us have one beautiful memory to share.
Trebell. [Determined she shall face the cold logic of her position.] Listen. I look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of drunkenness.
Amy. [Neither understanding nor wishing to; only shocked and hurt.] You beast.
Trebell. [With bitter sarcasm.] No, don't say that. Won't it comfort you to think of drunkenness as a beautiful thing? There are precedents enough ... classic ones.
Amy. You mean I might have been any other woman.
Trebell. [Quite inexorable.] Wouldn't any other woman have served the purpose ... and is it less of a purpose because we didn't know we had it? Does my unworthiness then ... if you like to call it so ... make you unworthy now? I must make you see that it doesn't.
Amy. [Petulantly hammering at her idée fixe.] But you didn't love me ... and you don't love me.
Trebell. [Keeping his patience.] No ... only within the last five minutes have I really taken the smallest interest in you. And now I believe I'm half jealous. Can you understand that? You've been talking a lot of nonsense about your emotions and your immortal soul. Don't you see it's only now that you've become a person of some importance to the world ... and why?
Amy. [Losing her patience, childishly.] What do you mean by the World? You don't seem to have any personal feelings at all. It's horrible you should have thought of me like that. There has been no other man than you that I would have let come anywhere near me ... not for more than a year.
He realises that she will never understand.