Angelina. Edwin, I can hide nothing from you. Even though it should wreck both our lives, you have the right to know the truth.
Edwin. My own darling, what is in your heart?
Angelina. Can you bear to hear it? Don't look at me, or I shall not have the courage to say what must be said. Edwin, I have never lived a disreputable life.
Edwin (burying his face in his hands). Great Heaven! and I believed in you so utterly. (Then rising, with a desperate effort to control his emotion.) Good-bye.
Angelina (falling on her knees, and clinging to him). Ah, no, you shall not go. Think of it, Edwin, of the temptations to virtue that surrounded me, of the examples of simple girlhood that poisoned my youth. If I have lived a life of spotless innocence, remember, at least, that I knew no better. What else could I do? Brought up from earliest infancy by a mother of unblemished reputation?
Edwin (with a gesture of horror). Your mother, too? Angelina, our marriage is impossible.
Angelina. How hard you men are. Is your sex alone to have the monopoly of innocence? Must there always be one law for women and another for dramatic authors? Oh, it is cruel! cruel! But you will not leave me. Remember, I am still young: it is never too late to err. And is it because I am a woman that I am to be denied the chance of retrieving the innocence of a mis-spent youth by the indiscretions of a riper womanhood? Besides, are there not cases, cases known to us both where a wife has lived down the terrible reproach of a blameless girlhood? Why, even Mr. Jones's latest heroine, and there is nothing later than that, could not absolutely prove she had gone wrong, and yet her husband took her back! But you are so proud, so relentless. You have no pity in your heart.
Edwin. Believe me, it is not pride. For myself, I would gladly brave the censure of the world, and if in after years men should say in scorn he married her though there was nothing against her, I should still be happy, knowing I had your love. But my father, that dear old man in his quiet, country vicarage. Think of it? It is too horrible!
Angelina (with bowed head.) You are right, I had forgotten your father.