'm not altogether a bad sort. I am easy-going. I
always have been easy-going. I'll make everything easy for you
now. But you see the fix I am in. You love another man, and I
simply must regain those letters. It is more important than you
realize.

{Margaret}

(_Incisively._) You make me realize how important those letters
are.

{Knox}

Give him the letters, Margaret

{Chalmers}

So she hasn't turned them over to you yet?

{Margaret}

No; I still have them.

{Knox}

Give them to him.

{Chalmers}

Selling out for a petticoat. A pretty reformer.

{Knox} (_Proudly._)

A better lover.

{Margaret}

(_To Chalmers._)

He is weak to-day. What of it? He was strong last night. He will
win back his strength again. It is human to be weak. And in his
very weakness now, I have my pride, for it is the weakness of
love. God knows I have been weak, and I am not ashamed of it. It
was the weakness of love. It is hard to stifle one's womanhood
always with morality. (_Quickly._)

But do not mistake, Tom. This of mine is no conventional
morality. I do not care about nasty gossipy tongues and
sensation-mongering sheets; nor do I care what any persons of all
the persons I know, would say if I went away with Mr. Knox this
instant. I would go, and go gladly and proudly with him, divorce
or no divorce, scandal or scandal triple-fold--if--if no one else
were hurt by what I did. (_To Knox._)

Howard, I tell you that I would go with you now, in all
willingness and joy, with May-time and the songs of all singing
birds in my heart--were it not for the others. But there is a
higher morality. We must not hurt those others. We dare not steal
our happiness from them. The future belongs to them, and we must
not, dare not, sacrifice that future nor give it in pledge for
our own happiness. Last night I came to you. I was weak--yes;
more than that--I was ignorant. I did not know, even as late as
last night, the monstrous vileness, the consummate wickedness of
present-day conditions. I learned that today, this morning, and
now. I learned that the morality of the Church was a pretense.
Far deeper than it, and vastly more powerful, was the morality
of the dollar. My father, my family, my husband, were willing to
condone what they believed was my adultery. And for what? For a
few scraps of paper that to them represented only the privilege
to plunder, the privilege to steal from the people.

(_To Chalmers._) Here are you, Tom, not