MABEL (faltering, yet not wholly giving up the chase). I can't think who she is. Have I ever seen her?
PURDIE. Every time you look in a mirror.
MABEL (with her head on one side). How odd, Jack, that can't be; when I look in a mirror I see only myself.
PURDIE (gloating). How adorably innocent you are, Mabel. Joanna would have guessed at once.
(Slowly his meaning comes to her, and she is appalled.)
MABEL. Not that!
PURDIE (aflame). Shall I tell you now?
MABEL (palpitating exquisitely). I don't know, I am not sure. Jack, try not to say it, but if you feel you must, say it in such a way that it would not hurt the feelings of Joanna if she happened to be passing by, as she nearly always is.
(A little moan from JOANNA'S tree is unnoticed.)
PURDIE. I would rather not say it at all than that way. (He is touchingly anxious that she should know him as he really is.) I don't know, Mabel, whether you have noticed that I am not like other men. (He goes deeply into the very structure of his being.) All my life I have been a soul that has had to walk alone. Even as a child I had no hope that it would be otherwise. I distinctly remember when I was six thinking how unlike other children I was. Before I was twelve I suffered from terrible self-depreciation; I do so still. I suppose there never was a man who had a more lowly opinion of himself.