MARIE
I want to call a halt to our adventure here.
PELTIER
I don't understand.
MARIE Don't interrupt me. What we are doing is crazy. It's not ridiculous, it's crazy. We will be far less happy than we were there. And it truly required all the influence of your charming character and the persuasion of your frankness (offering him her hand which he holds and keeps) to make me take this enormous step. It's no longer time, I know or rather I suspect, to go back on such an impulse, but after all, what do you want? And I am in despair after all this bravura which decided me, sustained me, swept me off my feet during this long journey from Paris to this chancy place. Ah, I'm afraid.
PELTIER (overwhelmed by surprise rather than skeptical and resolved as he had appeared up until now.) Afraid of whom and what? (he lets Marie's hand fall and crosses his arms waiting to hear more)
MARIE Of the past, first of all. Fear! Remorse because of the past. And certainly my husband doesn't deserve all this outrage. He's a man with faults, surely, even vices, perhaps. But he's honorable and even righteous. And now I think of it these quarrels between him and me must rather proceed from me, spoiled child and over-free young girl that I was before my marriage with this honest, with this gallant man.
PELTIER Let's leave Aubin out of this. In the end what do you mean and what do you want me to do? Return to Paris and your abandoned household?
MARIE I don't know yet. But don't interrupt me every minute and you will be of my opinion. No. My husband ought not to have to endure these things on his honor and his name. And it's true I am afraid of the past. I'm afraid of the future, too. Or rather, no. It's the present which frightens me, sir! For the future, I'll answer for it. And it will conform to the vows of my finally reawakened conscience.
PELTIER (who has a mounting rage within him and feels himself provoked
to the last degree)
Explain yourself? Are you joking or not? I want to understand you.
MARIE
Sir, you have no right to speak to me like this!
(Peltier advances like a man who has the right his interlocutor is speaking of or believes he's going to have it.)