[Rachel shakes her head.
Carteret. A lie, too, like all the rest? Oh, my God! [He sits down and buries his face in his hands]. And if the letter hadn't come I should have gone on being fooled to the end. You had better have told me, Rachel, before we married. I should have done exactly what I did—I should have married you all the same.
[Rachel moves with an irresistible impulse of love and gratitude towards him].
Carteret [stopping her]. No, you needn't go on with that now. I shouldn't have had those illusions—I shouldn't have had that dream of love and pride in—in the child, but I should not have had this ghastly awakening. Good God! that night that I told you about just now—the night I first heard—I've never told another human being about that night of revelation, of knowing what it meant to have a child—and it was all a lie. It was none of it true. She's not mine—I have no child—she's a child without a name.
Rachel [fiercely, in an agony of apprehension]. No, no! I won't have you say that! She has your name, your splendid name—Will, you're not going to take it from her? You're not going to make her suffer for something she had no part in?
Carteret. Am I likely to make a child suffer? Do you understand me as little as that—it is not the child who will have to endure—
[The clock strikes the hour—they look at each other].
Rachel. Are you going up to her?
Carteret [without looking at her]. No.
Rachel [hesitatingly]. I'll go instead. She'll be wondering.