Shelmerdene: No, no! You are much worse!
The Voice: Then I am as you made me.
Shelmerdene: That is why my eyes are wet.
The Voice: Come, come, Shelmerdene, don’t be silly! We ran amok, that’s all——
Shelmerdene: That’s all! I did not think I would live to see my own tragedy fulfilled—but I see it fulfilled in you! Isn’t that strange?
The Voice: All this, my dear, is quite beyond me. Will you answer a simple question? Suppose your husband—who you say was the only man you have ever loved and who, I am certain, has never loved any other woman but you—suppose this husband of yours came back to England and rang you up—to ask you to dine with him?
Shelmerdene: Just because, after all these years, he suddenly remembered her one night! Just because, after all these years, he suddenly saw a vision of her dancing—as he had last seen her, he who had suddenly, bitterly, vengefully, left her life because, being a child, she had taken a silly fancy to make him jealous! Oh, no, no! I would not dine with him—like that. Life is not like that. I do not know what life is like, for I am not yet a million years old, but I know that it is not like that. It is not so easy as that.
The Voice: My God, how efficiently you damn him, don’t you! That would be your answer?... Hallo, hallo! Would that be your answer, Shelmerdene, if he came back like—me——
Shelmerdene: Just like you?
The Voice: Well?