MAUD. Camele, Camele!
CAMELE. Well, it's the truth, I'm not.
MAUD. But what will you do--where will you live?
CAMELE. I don't know yet.
MAUD (after a pause, in a pleading voice). Come with us for a while.
CAMELE. Maud, all right--to-night--just to-night until I have time to
think.
MAUD. As long as you like--Alice is used to me protecting widows and
children. (She puts her arm around Camele.)
CAMELE. Just for a day or two; I'll hunt for a position to-morrow.
MAUD. You had much better write to your family. They'll forgive you when
they know that you have left the brute. To think of him striking you!
Where did he strike you?
CAMELE. Strike me? What do you mean--where did he strike me?
MAUD. Why, you said when you came in that Jack had struck you last
night.
CAMELE. How common of you, Maud--I thought that you would understand. I
didn't know that any of you took things literally--you didn't used to,
when I knew you before my marriage, and I knew you all very well.
MAUD. Very well, indeed--so he didn't strike you?
CAMELE. Yes, he did.
MAUD. Eh?
CAMELE. Yes and no. You see, Jack had been away for a week. I had been
painting rather hard and was very interested in an arrangement of blacks
I was trying to get. Subtle--blacks against blacks. It was coming along
well; I liked it in parts very much. It was finished almost, yesterday,
before he came home. Then, last night, he returned. I was tired, but
decided to show him the canvas, as he asked what I had been doing. We
went up to the studio. "Stand there," I said, and turned the canvas
toward the light. It really looked good: the tone was the best that I
had ever had in any of my canvases. He looked at it, and I at him. He
seemed to understand, at last, my work, I thought. He had never done so
before, which I realized only after we were married, and which came to
worry me more and more. "You do like it?" I asked. "Yes," he said--"it
looks like a Sargent!"
GEORGE (returns). Here are the lemons.
MAUD. You did right--come with us! To live with him now would be
impossible. Strike you--he did more--he tried to kill you--your soul. He
wanted you to go--he knew what he was saying and how it would affect
you. How you must have suffered before the final crash of last night
came!
CAMELE. Yes, and no, again. I don't believe that I hate him half as much
now as I did last evening.
MAUD. Camele, he has spoiled you completely. To hear you say that, after
what has happened between you, horrifies me.
CAMELE. You were never married.
MAUD. Meat! Meat!
YVONNE. Come, have some tea. Come, Camele.
(Maude and Camele, arm in arm, move towards the tea table, while George,
followed by Alice, comes and sits on the couch. The others sit around
the table.)
GEORGE. Why do you insist on following me? Stay with the girls over
there--hear the joys of married life.
ALICE. Joys--I am more interested in knowing why you did not come to see
me, as you promised last night?