mean to tremble, let us speak of something
else----

SARA.

Cruel woman!

MARWOOD.

I am sorry to be misunderstood. I at least, if I place myself in
imagination in Miss Sampson's position, would regard as a favour any
more exact information which one might give me about the man with whose
fate I was about to unite my own for ever.

SARA.

What do you wish, Madam? Do I not know my Mellefont already? Believe me
I know him, as I do my own soul. I know that he loves me----

MARWOOD.

And others----

SARA.

_Has_ loved others. That I know also. Was he to love me, before he knew
anything about me? Can I ask to be the only one who has had charm
enough to attract him? Must I not confess it to myself, that I have
striven to please him? Is he not so lovable, that he must have awakened
this endeavour in many a breast? And isn't it but natural, if several
have been successful in their endeavour?

MARWOOD.

You defend him with just the same ardour and almost the same words with
which I have often defended him already. It is no crime to have loved;
much less still is it a crime to have been loved. But fickleness is a
crime.

SARA.

Not always; for often, I believe, it is rendered excusable by the
objects of one's love, which seldom deserve to be loved for ever.

MARWOOD.

Miss Sampson's doctrine of morals does not seem to be of the strictest.

SARA.

It is true; the one by which I judge those who themselves confess that
they have taken to bad ways is not of the strictest. Nor should it be
so. For here it is not a question of fixing the limits which virtue
marks out for love, but merely of excusing the human weakness that has
not remained within those limits and of judging the consequences
arising therefrom by the rules of wisdom. If, for example, a Mellefont
loves a Marwood and eventually abandons her; this abandonment is very
praiseworthy in comparison with the love itself. It would be a
misfortune if he had to love a vicious person for ever because he once
had loved her.

MARWOOD.

But do you know this Marwood, whom you so confidently call a vicious
person?