(Gertrude goes into her chamber and locks the door.)
Vernon She has turned the key! I am caught, tricked! I cannot after all resort to violence. What is she doing? She is going to hide her flask of opium. A man is always wrong when he undertakes to discharge for a friend the offices which my old friend, this poor General, expects of me. She is going to entangle me—Ah! Here she comes.
Gertrude (aside)
I have burnt them! There is not a trace left—I am saved! (Aloud)
Doctor!
Vernon
Madame?
Gertrude My stepdaughter Pauline, whom you believed to be an innocent girl, an angel, had carried off furtively and criminally something whose discovery would have compromised the honor and the life of four persons.
Vernon Four! (Aside) That is herself, the General—Ah! her son, perhaps—and the unknown.
Gertrude This secret, concerning which she is forced to keep silence, even though it imperilled her life to do so—
Vernon
I don't quite catch your meaning.
Gertrude In short, the proofs of this secret are now destroyed! And you, doctor, who love us all, you would be as base, as infamous as she is—even more so, because you are a man, and have not the insensate passions of a woman!—You would be a monster if you were to take another step along the path on which you have now started—
Vernon You mean that for intimidation? Madame, since civilized society first sprang into being, the seed which you are sowing has produced a crop whose name is crime.