Lady S. It is a kind of hate. I cannot live!
I cannot live! I cannot let you live!
Remember, Tristram, how like frantic beasts
We toiled at love. Oh! … Oh! … How long I fought
This grinding passion of remorse, how strove
To deem the noxious beautiful! A fan
Against a storm! The wind is up; my boat
Beats on the breakers; all is swamped and lost.
Sir T. But beauty sanctioned all our frantic love.
Sometimes a moment's nausea—yes, sometimes
I shudder when I think; but hurl it off
Because I know the meaning: I am tired,
Depressed, too solitary; or forget
To eat, absorbed in study: food and wine
Replenish all my powers, and straightway sex
Becomes the purest wonder in the world.
Lady S. My sex is dead: it dies in women, sex.
I sinned; my life was sin; and since the power
To sin is dead, the sinner must die too.
Sir T. But I have still the power, the will to sin.
Lady S. How hateful! Oh, how hateful! Tristram, think!
Failure, defeat, disgrace—certain, to-night:
I see it, feel it, know it; and never yet
Has my delivered mood brought back to me
A lying message. Better instant death!
Sir T. But fortune came with Gervase—so you said.
Lady S. I felt a sudden lifting of despair
When Gervase came; but that was death: he brought
Religion, resignation, denial, death.
Oh, we must die! Conceive what failure means!
Eyes of commiseration, scornful lips,
Emphatic pressure of a pitying hand,
Thrice gracious bows, and triple-hatted shrugs,
Sugared contempt, and rancour heavy-spiced
Must never greet us, Tristram: we must die.
You would not have our special enemy,
The whipper-in of anti-Sumnerites,
In print and prattle triumph nauseously?
Sir T. A change, by heaven! Are you not she who held
No jargon ever writ or babbled hurt
An artist or an artist's wife?
Lady S. I did,
Being sick and sore and wounded to the quick:
Who talks of jargon says "my soul is stung".
The mask is off, Sir Tristram. I'm going to die;
And mean to tell the truth right on from now
Until we drink that draught together. Choose:
A flood of truth about the world and us,
Or death immediately. Let it be death.
The pain it is to me to live! Oh, Tristram!
Sir T. I mean to live; and so do you. Defeat
Is not so sure: at least, my own success
Is certain always, though the play may fail—
As plays have failed before and will again.