GUENEVERE. Then what do you want?
LANCELOT. I want--a kiss.
GUENEVERE. Never. If you had believed, for one your chance.
LANCELOT. Kiss me!
GUENEVERE. Never. If you had believed, for one moment, that it _was_
worth the price of grief and heartbreak, I should have believed it too,
and kissed you, and not cared what happened. I should have risked the
love of my husband and the happiness of your sweetheart without a
qualm. And who knows? It might have been worth it. An hour from now I
shall be sure it wasn't; I shall be sure it was all blind, wicked
folly. But now I am a little sorry. I wanted to gamble with fate. I
wanted us to stake our two lives recklessly upon a kiss--and see what
happened. And you couldn't. It wasn't a moment of beauty and terror to
you. You didn't want to challenge fate. You just wanted to kiss me....
Go!
LANCELOT. (_turning on her bitterly_) You women! Because you are
afraid, you accuse us of being cowards.
GUENEVERE. What do you mean?
LANCELOT. (_brutally_) You! You want a love-affair. Your common
sense tells you it's folly. Your reason won't allow it. So you want
your common sense to be overwhelmed, your reason lost. You want to be
swept off your, feet. You want to be _made_ to do something you
don't approve of. You want to be wicked, and you want it to be some one
else's fault. Tell me--isn't it true?
GUENEVERE. Yes, it is true--except for one thing, Lancelot. It's true
that I wanted you to sweep me off my feet, to make me forget
everything; it was wrong, it was foolish of me to want it, but I did.
Only if you had done it, you wouldn't have been "to blame." I should
have loved you for ever because you could do it. And now, because you
couldn't I despise you. Now you know. ... Go.
LANCELOT. No, Guenevere, you don't despise me. You're angry with me and
angry with yourself because you couldn't quite forget King Arthur. You
are blaming me and I am blaming you, isn't it amusing?
GUENEVERE. You are right, Lancelot. It's my fault. Oh, I envy women who
can dare to make fools of themselves who forget everything and don't
care what they do! I suppose that's love--and I'm not up to it.
LANCELOT. You are different....
GUENEVERE. Different? Yes, I'm a coward. I'm not primitive enough.
Despise me. You've a right to. And--please go.