way.

MOTHER. Leave this room, and this house too.

STRANGER. If I were to do as you ask, in ten minutes you'd send the
police after me, for abandoning my wife and child!

MOTHER. I'd only do that to have you taken to a convent you know of.

MAID (entering at the back). The Lady's asking you to do something for
her.

STRANGER. What is it?

MAID. There's supposed to be a letter in the dress she left hanging
here.

STRANGER (looks round and notices the green dress; he goes over to it
and takes a letter from the pocket). This is addressed to me, and was
opened two days ago. Broken open! That's good!

MOTHER. You must forgive someone who's as ill as your wife.

STRANGER. She wasn't ill two days ago.

MOTHER. No. But she is now.

STRANGER. But not two days ago! (Reading the letter.) Well, I'll forgive
her now, with the magnanimity of the victor.

MOTHER. Of the victor?

STRANGER. Yes. For I've done something no one's ever done before.

MOTHER. You mean the gold....?

STRANGER. Here's a certificate from the greatest living authority. Now
I'll go and see him myself.

MOTHER. Now!

STRANGER. At your request.

MAID (to the STRANGER). The Lady asks you to come in.

MOTHER. You hear?

STRANGER. No, now I don't want to! You've made your own daughter, my
wife, into a whore; and branded my unborn child a bastard. You can keep
them both. You've murdered my honour. There's nothing for me to do but
to revive it elsewhere.

MOTHER. You can never forgive!

STRANGER. I can. I forgive you--and I shall leave you. (He puts on the
brown cloak and hat, picks up his stick and travelling bag.) For if I
were to stay, I'd soon grow worse than I am now. The innocent child,
whose mission was to ennoble our warped relationship, has been defiled
by you in his mother's womb and made an apple of discord and a source of
punishment a revenge. Why should I stay here to be torn to pieces?

MOTHER. For you, duties don't exist.

STRANGER. Oh yes, they do! And the first of them's this: To protect
myself from total destruction. Farewell!

Curtain.

ACT III

SCENE I

THE BANQUETING HALL

[Room in a hotel prepared for a banquet. There are long tables laden
with flowers and candelabra. Dishes with peacocks, pheasants in full
plumage, boars' heads, entire lobsters, oysters, salmon, bundles of
asparagus, melons and grapes. There is a musicians' gallery with eight
players in the right-hand corner at the back.]

[At the