RICHARD.
You would try, yes. You were drawn to him as your mind was drawn towards mine. You held back from him. From me, too, in a different way. You cannot give yourself freely and wholly.
BEATRICE.
[Joins her hands softly.] It is a terribly hard thing to do, Mr Rowan—to give oneself freely and wholly—and be happy.
RICHARD.
But do you feel that happiness is the best, the highest that we can know?
BEATRICE.
[With fervour.] I wish I could feel it.
RICHARD.
[Leans back, his hands locked together behind his head.] O, if you knew how I am suffering at this moment! For your case, too. But suffering most of all for my own. [With bitter force.] And how I pray that I may be granted again my dead mother’s hardness of heart! For some help, within me or without, I must find. And find it I will.
[Beatrice rises, looks at him intently, and walks away toward the garden door. She turns with indecision, looks again at him and, coming back, leans over the easychair.]
BEATRICE.
[Quietly.] Did she send for you before she died, Mr Rowan?
RICHARD.
[Lost in thought.] Who?
BEATRICE.
Your mother.
RICHARD.
[Recovering himself, looks keenly at her for a moment.] So that, too, was said of me here by my friends—that she sent for me before she died and that I did not go?