oyed 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.

STRANGER. But sometimes you've even despised me?

WOMAN. Yes, when you were ridiculous. A man in love is always
ridiculous. Do you know what a cox-comb is? That's what a lover's like.

STRANGER. But if any man who loves you is ridiculous, how can you
respond to his love?

WOMAN. We don't! We submit to it, and search for another man who doesn't
love us.

STRANGER. But if he, in turn, begins to love you, do you look for a
third?

WOMAN. Perhaps it's like that.

STRANGER. Very strange. (There is a silence.) I remember you were always
dreaming of someone you called your Toreador, which I translated by
'horse butcher.' You eventually got him, but he gave you no children,
and no bread; only beatings! A toreador's always fighting. (Silence.)
Once I let myself be tempted into trying to compete with the toreador.
I started to bicycle and fence and do other things of the kind. But you
only began to detest me for it. That means that the husband mayn't do
what the lover may. Later you had a passion for page boys. One of them
used to sit on the Brussels carpet and read you bad verses.... My good
ones were of no use to you. Did you get your page boy?

WOMAN. Yes. But his verses weren't bad, really.

STRANGER. Oh yes, they were, my dear. I know him! He stole my rhythms
and set them for the barrel organ.

WOMAN (rising and going to the door.) You sh