CHARLIE. You won't release me?
ROSIE. Never. Oh, you needn't be afraid. I dare say I've a surprise in store for you. You'll be none the worse for having a woman by your side and I know I'm the right woman. There's only one way of making you believe it, and that is by marrying you and proving it. I'm not afraid.
CHARLIE. Well, I am. (Crossing to r.c.) You're assuming that I'm the ordinary sort of fool who thinks money's everything. I may be a lunatic, but I'm not that brand. I want to be left alone. I want a decent chance of living my life in my own way. As things are, I'm caged. I'm at the bottom of an infamous well, and there's a window somewhere far up, but I can't reach it. I can't find the way out. (Rosie smiles compassionately.) Now, you're laughing at me. You! Rosie, harmless, necessary Rosie, whom I've always thought of as the type of bread and butter miss.
ROSIE. And you're surprised to find her a woman with a will of her own?
CHARLIE. You won't let me go? (Crossing to l.c.)
ROSIE. Never.
CHARLIE. Do you know what you are doing?
ROSIE (confidently). Oh, yes.
CHARLIE. You don't. You think you're being my guardian angel. You think you're helping me. As a matter of fact, you're hanging a millstone round my neck which will drag me down to the lowest depths of human misery. If it wasn't so utterly tragic I could laugh for a week at the silliness of it all. I'm not allowed an opinion of my own. I'm not to diverge by one hand's breadth from the path laid down for me. I'm to marry the wife you choose and do the work you choose and own the wealth you choose and take the place in society laid down for me. I'm not a man. I'm a specimen in a case with a pin through my body. I'm clay in the hands of the potter. I'm——
ROSIE. You're the man I love. (Charlie collapses into chair l. of table.)