Is it a challenge?
MARGERY.
Challenge or not, you shall! It is ignoble to desert her so! You are a coward to make love to me! If her love was unworthy, what is yours? Is it for you to cast a stone at her? See! Read your letters! [Producing a packet.] Letters to me—love-letters! Letters to a woman you didn’t respect in her grief and persecuted in her loneliness—a woman who would have none of you—who tells you to your face you’re not a man! Your love’s an insult! take the thing away!
[Turns off. Pause.
SYLVESTER.
Do you propose to send those to my wife?
MARGERY.
No! but I want to make you realize you need more mercy than you show to her. These letters were written for my eye alone; to open them was to promise secrecy.
SYLVESTER.
Why have you kept them, then?