e awning and going on his lips] If I am not better
soon----

MRS. BRADMERE. I know it must be terrible to feel that everybody----

[A convulsive shiver passes over STRANGWAY, and he shrinks
against the door]

But come! Live it down!

[With anger growing at his silence]

Live it down, man! You can't desert your post--and let these
villagers do what they like with us? Do you realize that you're
letting a woman, who has treated you abominably;--yes, abominably
--go scot-free, to live comfortably with another man? What an
example!

STRANGWAY. Will you, please, not speak of that!

MRS. BRADMERE. I must! This great Church of ours is based on the
rightful condemnation of wrongdoing. There are times when
forgiveness is a sin, Michael Strangway. You must keep the whip
hand. You must fight!

STRANGWAY. Fight! [Touching his heart] My fight is here. Have you
ever been in hell? For months and months--burned and longed; hoped
against hope; killed a man in thought day by day? Never rested, for
love and hate? I--condemn! I--judge! No! It's rest I have to
find--somewhere--somehow-rest! And how--how can I find rest?

MRS. BRADMERE. [Who has listened to his outburst in a soft of coma]
You are a strange man! One of these days you'll go off your head if
you don't take care.

STRANGWAY. [Smiling] One of these days the flowers will grow out of
me; and I shall sleep.

[MRS. BRADMERE stares at his smiling face a long moment in
silence, then with a little sound, half sniff, half snort, she
goes to the door. There she halts.]

MRS. BRADMERE. And you mean to let all this go on----Your wife----

STRANGWAY. Go! Please go!

MRS. BRADMERE. Men like you have been buried at cross-roads before
now! Take care! God punishes!

STRANGWAY. Is there a God?

MRS. BRADMERE. Ah! [With finality] You must see a doctor.

[Seeing that the look on his face does not change, she opens the
door, and hurries away into the moonlight.]

[STRANGWAY crosses the room to where his wife's picture hangs,
and stands before it, his hands grasping the frame. Then he
takes it from the wall, and lays it face upwards on the window
seat.]

STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! What is there, now?

[The sound of an owl's hooting is floating in, and of voices
from the green outside the inn.]

STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! Taken faith--hope--life!

[J