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Page 114
WOMAN. Not yet.
STRANGER. Why did you leave your husband? (The WOMAN doesn't
reply.) Did he beat you?
WOMAN. Yes.
STRANGER. How did he come to forget himself so far?
WOMAN. He was angry.
STRANGER. What about?
WOMAN. Nothing.
STRANGER. Why was he angry about nothing?
WOMAN (rising). No, thank you! I won't sit here and be picked to
pieces. Where's your wife?
STRANGER. She left me just now.
WOMAN. Why?
STRANGER. Why did you leave me?
WOMAN. I felt you wanted to leave me; so, not to be deserted, I
went myself.
STRANGER. I dare say that's true. But how could you read my
thoughts?
WOMAN (sitting down again). What? We didn't need to speak in order
to know one another's thoughts.
STRANGER. We made a mistake when we were living together, because
we accused each other of wicked thoughts before they'd become
actions; and lived in mental reservations instead of realities. For
instance, I once noticed how you enjoyed the defiling gaze of a
strange man, and I accused you of unfaithfulness.
WOMAN. You were wrong to do so, and right. Because my thoughts were
sinful.
STRANGER. Don't you think my habit of 'anticipating you' prevented
your bad designs from being put in practice?
WOMAN. Let me think! Yes, perhaps it did. But I was annoyed to find
a spy always at my side, watching my inmost self, that was my own.
STRANGER. But it wasn't your own: it was ours!
WOMAN. Yes, but I held it to be mine, and believed you'd no right
to force your way in. When you did so I hated you; I said you were
abnormally suspicious out of self-defence. Now I can admit that
your suspicions were never wrong; that they were, in fact, the
purest wisdom.
STRANGER. Oh! Do you know that, at night, when we'd said good-night
as friends and gone to sleep, I used to wake and feel your hatred
poisoning me; and think of getting out of bed so as not to be
suffocated. One night I woke and felt a pressure on the top of my
head. I saw you were awake and had put your hand close to my mouth.
I thought you were making me inhale poison from a phial; and, to
make sure, I seized your hand.
WOMAN. I remember.
STRANGER. What did you do then?
WOMAN. Nothing. Only hated you.
STRANGER. Why?
WOMAN. Because you were my husband. Because I ate your bread.
STRANGER. Do you think it's always the same?
WOMAN. I don't know. I suspect it is.
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