Leslie. Mary...!
Mary. You forget, you forget what I am. I am his sister. I owe him a lifetime of happiness and love; I owe him even you. And whatever his fault, however ruinous his disgrace, he is my brother—my own brother—and my place is still with him.
Leslie. Your place is with me—is with your husband. With me, with me; and for his sake most of all. What can you do for him alone? how can you help him alone? It wrings my heart to think how little. But together is different. Together...! Join my strength, my will, my courage to your own, and together we may save him.
Mary. All that is over. Once I was blessed among women. I was my father’s daughter, my brother loved me, I lived to be your wife. Now...! My father is dead, my brother is shamed; and you ... O how could I face the world, how could I endure myself, if I preferred my happiness to your honour?
Leslie. What is my honour but your happiness? In what else does it consist? Is it in denying me my heart? is it in visiting another’s sin upon the innocent? Could I do that, and be my mother’s son? Could I do that, and bear my father’s name? Could I do that, and have ever been found worthy of you?
Mary. It is my duty ... my duty. Why will you make it so hard for me? So hard, Walter, so hard!
Leslie. Do I pursue you only for your good fortune, your beauty, the credit of your friends, your family’s good name? That were not love, and I love you. I love you, dearest, I love you. Friend, father, brother, husband ... I must be all these to you. I am a man who can love well.
Mary. Silence ... in pity! I cannot ... O, I cannot bear it.
Leslie. And say it was I who had fallen. Say I had played my neck and lost it ... that I were pushed by the law to the last limits of ignominy and despair. Whose love would sanctify my gaol to me? whose pity would shine upon me in the dock? whose prayers would accompany me to the gallows? Whose but yours? Yours!... And you would entreat me—me!—to do what you shrink from even in thought, what you would die ere you attempted in deed!
Mary. Walter ... on my knees ... no more, no more!