lady chiltern. [After a pause.] Why do you not answer it?
sir robert chiltern. [Sitting down.] Gertrude, truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to compromise. Every one does.
lady chiltern. Compromise? Robert, why do you talk so differently to-night from the way I have always heard you talk? Why are you changed?
sir robert chiltern. I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
lady chiltern. Circumstances should never alter principles!
sir robert chiltern. But if I told you—
lady chiltern. What?
sir robert chiltern. That it was necessary, vitally necessary?
lady chiltern. It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable. Or if it be necessary, then what is it that I have loved! But it is not, Robert; tell me it is not. Why should it be? What gain would you get? Money? We have no need of that! And money that comes from a tainted source is a degradation. Power? But power is nothing in itself. It is power to do good that is fine—that, and that only. What is it, then? Robert, tell me why you are going to do this dishonourable thing!
sir robert chiltern. Gertrude, you have no right to use that word. I told you it was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.