How He Lied to Her Husband | Page 8

will declare it to your husband
when you see--as you soon will see-- that this is the only way
honorable enough for your feet to tread. Let us go out together to our
own house, this evening, without concealment and without shame.
Remember! we owe something to your husband. We are his guests here:
he is an honorable man: he has been kind to us: he has perhaps loved
you as well as his prosaic nature and his sordid commercial
environment permitted. We owe it to him in all honor not to let him
learn the truth from the lips of a scandalmonger. Let us go to him now

quietly, hand in hand; bid him farewell; and walk out of the house
without concealment and subterfuge, freely and honestly, in full honor
and self-respect.
SHE [staring at him] And where shall we go to?
HE. We shall not depart by a hair's breadth from the ordinary natural
current of our lives. We were going to the theatre when the loss of the
poems compelled us to take action at once. We shall go to the theatre
still; but we shall leave your diamonds here; for we cannot afford
diamonds, and do not need them.
SHE [fretfully] I have told you already that I hate diamonds; only
Teddy insists on hanging me all over with them. You need not preach
simplicity to me.
HE. I never thought of doing so, dearest: I know that these trivialities
are nothing to you. What was I saying--oh yes. Instead of coming back
here from the theatre, you will come with me to my home--now and
henceforth our home--and in due course of time, when you are divorced,
we shall go through whatever idle legal ceremony you may desire. I
attach no importance to the law: my love was not created in me by the
law, nor can it be bound or loosed by it. That is simple enough, and
sweet enough, is it not? [He takes the flower from the table]. Here are
flowers for you: I have the tickets: we will ask your husband to lend us
the carriage to show that there is no malice, no grudge, between us.
Come!
SHE [spiritlessly, taking the flowers without looking at them, and
temporizing] Teddy isn't in yet.
HE. Well, let us take that calmly. Let us go to the theatre as if nothing
had happened. and tell him when we come back. Now or three hours
hence: to-day or to-morrow: what does it matter, provided all is done in
honor, without shame or fear?
SHE. What did you get tickets for? Lohengrin?
HE. I tried; but Lohengrin was sold out for to-night. [He takes out two
Court Theatre tickets].
SHE. Then what did you get?
HE. Can you ask me? What is there besides Lohengrin that we two
could endure, except Candida?
SHE [springing up] Candida! No, I won't go to it again, Henry [tossing
the flower on the piano]. It is that play that has done all the mischief.

I'm very sorry I ever saw it: it ought to be stopped.
HE [amazed] Aurora!
SHE. Yes: I mean it.
HE. That divinest love poem! the poem that gave us courage to speak
to one another! that revealed to us what we really felt for one another!
That--
SHE. Just so. It put a lot of stuff into my head that I should never have
dreamt of for myself. I imagined myself just like Candida.
HE [catching her hands and looking earnestly at her] You were right.
You are like Candida.
SHE [snatching her hands away] Oh, stuff! And I thought you were just
like Eugene. [Looking critically at him] Now that I come to look at you,
you are rather like him, too. [She throws herself discontentedly into the
nearest seat, which happens to be the bench at the piano. He goes to
her].
HE [very earnestly] Aurora: if Candida had loved Eugene she would
have gone out into the night with him without a moment's hesitation.
SHE [with equal earnestness] Henry: do you know what's wanting in
that play?
HE. There is nothing wanting in it.
SHE. Yes there is. There's a Georgina wanting in it. If Georgina had
been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life
tragedy. Now I'll tell you something about it that I have never told you
before.
HE. What is that?
SHE. I took Teddy to it. I thought it would do him good; and so it
would if I could only have kept him awake. Georgina came too; and
you should have heard the way she went on about it. She said it was
downright immoral, and that she knew the sort of woman that
encourages boys to sit on the hearthrug and make