m]. Wake
up! So you think I've been asleep, do you? [He kicks the chair violently
back out of his way, and gets between them]. You throw me into a trance
so that I can't move hand or foot--I might have been buried alive! it's
a mercy I wasn't--and then you think I was only asleep. If you'd let
me drop the two times you rolled me about, my nose would have been
flattened for life against the floor. But I've found you all out,
anyhow. I know the sort of people I'm among now. I've heard every word
you've said, you and your precious father, and [to Mrs Hushabye] you
too. So I'm an object, am I? I'm a thing, am I? I'm a fool that hasn't
sense enough to feed myself properly, am I? I'm afraid of the men that
would starve if it weren't for the wages I give them, am I? I'm nothing
but a disgusting old skinflint to be made a convenience of by designing
women and fool managers of my works, am I? I'm--

MRS HUSHABYE [with the most elegant aplomb]. Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh! Mr Mangan,
you are bound in honor to obliterate from your mind all you heard while
you were pretending to be asleep. It was not meant for you to hear.

MANGAN. Pretending to be asleep! Do you think if I was only pretending
that I'd have sprawled there helpless, and listened to such unfairness,
such lies, such injustice and plotting and backbiting and slandering of
me, if I could have up and told you what I thought of you! I wonder I
didn't burst.

MRS HUSHABYE [sweetly]. You dreamt it all, Mr Mangan. We were only
saying how beautifully peaceful you looked in your sleep. That was all,
wasn't it, Ellie? Believe me, Mr Mangan, all those unpleasant things
came into your mind in the last half second before you woke. Ellie
rubbed your hair the wrong way; and the disagreeable sensation suggested
a disagreeable dream.

MANGAN [doggedly]. I believe in dreams.

MRS HUSHABYE. So do I. But they go by contraries, don't they?

MANGAN [depths of emotion suddenly welling up in him]. I shan't forget,
to my dying day, that when you gave me the glad eye that time in the
garden, you were making a fool of me. That was a dirty low mean thing
to do. You had no right to let me come near you if I disgusted you.
It isn't my fault if I'm old and haven't a moustache like a bronze
candlestick as your husband has. There are things no decent woman would
do to a man--like a man hitting a woman in the breast.

Hesione, utterly shamed, sits down on the sofa and covers her face with
her hands. Mangan