George. And I've hated myself for loving you. I've hated you for making me love you. I've struggled with all my might and a hundred times I thought I'd conquered myself and then the touch of your hand, the softness of your lips—I was like a bird in a cage, I beat myself against the bars and all the time the door was open and I hadn't the will to fly out.
Daisy. [Tenderly.] Oh, darling, why do you make yourself unhappy when happiness lies in the hollow of your hand?
George. Have you never regretted anything?
Daisy. Never.
George. You're stronger than I am. I'm as weak as dishwater. It's funny that it should have taken me all these years to find it out. I was weak from the beginning. But I was weakest of all that day. I was distracted, I thought you were dying, I forgot everything except that I loved you.
Daisy. [With passion.] Oh, my sweetheart! Don't you remember how, late in the night, we went outside the temple and looked at the moonlight on the walls of the Forbidden City? You had no regrets then.
George. [Going on with his own thoughts.] And afterwards your tears, your happiness, the dread of giving you pain and the hot love that burnt me—I was in the toils then. I too knew a happiness that I had never known before. On one side was honesty and duty and everything that makes a man respect himself—and on the other was love. I thought you'd be going away in two or three weeks and that would be the end of it. Oh, it was no excuse—there are no excuses for me, I can never look Harry in the face again, but though my heart was breaking at the thought, I—I knew that in a few days I should see you for the last time.
Daisy. [Scornfully.] Do you think I'd have gone then?
George. And then came that sudden, unexpected, disastrous change in all Harry's plans. And this house and all the sordid horror of an intrigue. And then there was nothing to do but face the fact that I was a cur. I wouldn't wish my worst enemy the torture that I've undergone.
Daisy. [Full of love and pity.] Oh, my darling, you know I'd do anything in the world to give you happiness!