."
How pretty. It's one hundred and fifty miles away.
What a long journey for such a marriage. A valentine!
_(she takes the papers and kneels at the fire-place.
She goes down on her knees before fire and
burns the papers, first kissing them. Eric raises
his head)_ A lucky thing that Christie made such a
bright fire for me. _(shivering)_ And yet it is cold.
Ha! I suppose heat never comes from burnt love
letters, _(to the letters)_ Good-bye! Good-bye! _(Eric
rises and slowly comes down C.)_

{Eric.} _(hoarsely)_ Kate!

{Kate.} _(with a cry she starts up and faces him)_
Eric!

_(Music stops.)_

{Eric.} I know everything. I have heard. What
have you to say to me?

_(Kate walks feebly towards him behind chair.)_

{Kate.} _(leaning on chair for support)_ Nothing
but--leave me. I am looking at you now for the
last time, _(passes behind table to C. R., of bureau)_

{Eric.} How can I leave you when we are bound
by such ties? My love chains me to you--nothing
earthly can break that?

{Kate.} The same words with which you wooed
that other woman! _(passes to front of table)_

{Eric.} Kate! _(advancing)_

{Kate.} Don't touch me or I shall drop dead with
shame.

_(Eric advances again.)_

Don't touch me--I can bear anything now but that!

{Eric.} You must hear me! _(moves L. C.)_

{Kate.} Hear you! What can you tell me but that
the pretty music you have played in my ears has been
but the dull echo of your old love-making? What
can you tell me but that I am a dishonoured woman,
_(Eric turns away)_ with no husband, yet not a widow
--like to be a mother, and never to be a wife!\
_(advances a step)_

{Eric.} You will listen to me to-morrow? _(turns
up a little)_

{Kate.} To-morrow! I have no to-morrow. I am
living my life now. My life! my life! oh, what it
might have been! _(she sinks on her knees with her
head upon the floor by table. Eric bends over her)_

{Eric.} Kate, don't shrink from me! I go down in
the same wreck with you. You are a hopeless woman
--I stand beside you a hopeless man.

{Kate.} _(moaning)_ You never told me of the past.
Oh, the times I have looked in the glass, with the
flush on my cheek that you have painted there, and
called myself