or a
moment. What would Martha feel if she heard you going on this way?
Why--it would kill her!

CURTIS--[With a sobbing groan.] Oh, I know, I know! [After a pause.]
She read it in my eyes. Yes, it's horrible, but when I saw her there
suffering so frightfully--I couldn't keep it out of my eyes. I tried to
force it back--for her sake--but I couldn't. I was holding her hands
and her eyes searched mine with such a longing question in them--and
she read only my hatred there, not my love for her. And she screamed
and seemed to try to push me away. I wanted to kneel down and pray for
forgiveness--to tell her it was only my love for her--that I couldn't
help it. And then the doctors told me to leave--and now the door is
locked against me--[He sobs.]

BIGELOW--[Greatly moved.] This is only your damned imagination. They
put you out because you were in their way, that's all. And as for
Martha, she was probably suffering so much--

CURTIS--No. She read it in my eyes. I saw that look in hers--of
horror--horror of me!

BIGELOW--[Gruffly.] You're raving, damn it!

CURTIS--[Unheeding.] It came home to her then--the undeniable truth.
[With a groan.] Isn't it fiendish that I should be the one to add to
her torture--in spite of myself--in spite of all my will to conceal it!
She will never forgive me, never! And how can I forgive myself?

BIGELOW--[Distractedly.] For God's sake, don't think about it! It's
absurd--ridiculous!

CURTIS--[Growing more calm--in a tone of obsession.] She's guessed it
ever since that day when we quarreled--her birthday. Oh, you can have
no idea of the misery there has been in our lives since then. You
haven't seen or guessed the reason. No one has. It has been--the
thought of IT.

BIGELOW--Curt!

CURTIS--[Unheeding.] For years we had welded our lives together so that
we two were sufficient, each to each. There was no room for a third.
And it was a fine, free life we had made--a life of new worlds, of
discovery, of knowledge invaluable to mankind. Isn't such a life worth
all the sacrifice it must entail?

BIGELOW--But that life was your life, Curt--

CURTIS--[Vehemently.] No, it was her life, too--her work as well as
mine. She had made the life, our life--the work, our work. Had she the
right to repudiate what she had built because she suddenly has a fancy
for a home, children, a miserable ease! I had thought I was her home,
her children. I had tried to make my life worthy of being that to her.
An