se how I was tempted. Let me tell you the
whole thing. [_Goes towards her_.]

LADY CHILTERN. Don't come near me. Don't touch me. I feel as if you
had soiled me for ever. Oh! what a mask you have been wearing all these
years! A horrible painted mask! You sold yourself for money. Oh! a
common thief were better. You put yourself up to sale to the highest
bidder! You were bought in the market. You lied to the whole world.
And yet you will not lie to me.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [_Rushing towards her_.] Gertrude! Gertrude!

LADY CHILTERN. [_Thrusting him back with outstretched hands_.] No,
don't speak! Say nothing! Your voice wakes terrible memories--memories
of things that made me love you--memories of words that made me love
you--memories that now are horrible to me. And how I worshipped you!
You were to me something apart from common life, a thing pure, noble,
honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in
it, and goodness more real because you lived. And now--oh, when I think
that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There was your mistake. There was your error. The
error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all?
Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay,
women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing
their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the
more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the
imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own
hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us--else
what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love
should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.
A man's love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a
woman's. Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are
making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and
I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my
weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it
now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me--yes, ruined it! What
this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me.
She offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had
thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its
hands