rm
tinge of sunset now colours the scene outside the window.]

ST. OLPHERTS. [With a shrug of his shoulders.] The real Lucas Cleeve.

AGNES. No, no! Untrue, untrue! [LUCAS enters. The three remain silent
for a moment.] The Duke of St. Olpherts calls in answer to a letter I
wrote to him yesterday. I wanted to make his acquaintance. [She goes
out.]

LUCAS. [After a brief pause.] By a lucky accident the tables were
crowded at Florian's; I might have missed the chance of welcoming you.
In God's name, Duke, why must you come here?

ST. OLPHERTS. [Fumbling in his pocket for a note.] In God's name? You
bring the orthodoxy into this queer firm, then, Lucas? [Handing the
note to LUCAS.] A peremptory summons.

LUCAS. You need not have obeyed it. [ST. OLPHERTS takes a cigarette
from his case and limps away.] I looked about for you just now. I
wanted to see you.

ST. OLPHERTS. How fortunate--

LUCAS. To tell you that this persecution must come to an end. It has
made me desperately wretched for a whole week.

ST. OLPHERTS. Persecution?

LUCAS. Temptation.

ST. OLPHERTS. Dear Lucas, the process of inducing a man to return to
his wife isn't generally described as temptation.

LUCAS. Ah, I won't hear another word of that proposal. [ST. OLPHERTS
shrugs his shoulders.] I say my people are offering me, through you, a
deliberate temptation to be a traitor. To which of these two women--my
wife or--[pointing to the door]--to her--am I really bound now? It
may be regrettable, scandalous, but the common rules of right and wrong
have ceased to apply here. Finally, Duke--and this is my message--I
intend to keep faith with the woman who sat by my bedside in Rome, the
woman to whom I shouted my miserable story in my delirium, the woman
whose calm, resolute voice healed me, hardened me, renewed in me the
desire to live.

ST. OLPHERTS. Ah! Oh, these modern nurses, in their greys, or browns,
and snowy bibs! They have much to answer for, dear Lucas.

LUCAS. No, no! Why will you persist, all of you, in regarding this as a
mere morbid infatuation, bred in the fumes of pastilles? It isn't so!
Laugh, if you care to; but this is a meeting of affinities, of the
solitary man and the truly sympathetic woman.

ST. OLPHERTS. And oh--oh these sympathetic women!

LUCAS. No! Oh, the unsympathetic women! There you have the cause of
half the world's misery. The unsympathetic women--you should have
loved one of them.

ST. OLPHERTS. I dare say I'