SHELMERDENE: No, no! You are much worse!
THE VOICE: Then I am as you made me.
SHELMERDENE: That is why my eyes are wet.
THE VOICE: Come, come, Shelmerdene, don’t be silly! We ran amok, that’s
all----
SHELMERDENE: That’s all! I did not think I would live to see my own
tragedy fulfilled--but I see it fulfilled in you! Isn’t that strange?
THE VOICE: All this, my dear, is quite beyond me. Will you answer a
simple question? Suppose your husband--who you say was the only man you
have ever loved and who, I am certain, has never loved any other woman
but you--suppose this husband of yours came back to England and rang you
up--to ask you to dine with him?
SHELMERDENE: Just because, after all these years, he suddenly remembered
her one night! Just because, after all these years, he suddenly saw a
vision of her dancing--as he had last seen her, he who had suddenly,
bitterly, vengefully, left her life because, being a child, she had
taken a silly fancy to make him jealous! Oh, no, no! I would not dine
with him--like that. Life is not like that. I do not know what life is
like, for I am not yet a million years old, but I know that it is not
like that. It is not so easy as that.
THE VOICE: My God, how efficiently you damn him, don’t you! That would
be your answer?... Hallo, hallo! Would that be your answer, Shelmerdene,
if he came back like--me----
SHELMERDENE: Just like you?
THE VOICE: Well?
SHELMERDENE: He would just be a man I had dined with once.
(_A Silence._)
THE VOICE: I am sorry to have disturbed you. Good-night.