my life.

CANDIDA. That was first rate! How much was the collection?

MORELL. I forgot to ask.

CANDIDA (to Eugene). He must have spoken splendidly, or he would never
have forgotten that. (To Morell.) Where are all the others?

MORELL. They left long before I could get away: I thought I should
never escape. I believe they are having supper somewhere.

CANDIDA (in her domestic business tone). Oh; in that case, Maria may go
to bed. I'll tell her. (She goes out to the kitchen.)

MORELL (looking sternly down at Marchbanks). Well?

MARCHBANKS (squatting cross-legged on the hearth-rug, and actually at
ease with Morell--even impishly humorous). Well?

MORELL. Have you anything to tell me?

MARCHBANKS. Only that I have been making a fool of myself here in
private whilst you have been making a fool of yourself in public.

MORELL. Hardly in the same way, I think.

MARCHBANKS (scrambling up--eagerly). The very, very, VERY same way. I
have been playing the good man just like you. When you began your
heroics about leaving me here with Candida--

MORELL (involuntarily). Candida?

MARCHBANKS. Oh, yes: I've got that far. Heroics are infectious: I
caught the disease from you. I swore not to say a word in your absence
that I would not have said a month ago in your presence.

MORELL. Did you keep your oath?

MARCHBANKS. (suddenly perching himself grotesquely on the easy chair).
I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that
moment I went on desperately reading to her--reading my own
poems--anybody's poems--to stave off a conversation. I was standing
outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think
how heroic it was, and how uncomfortable! Then--

MORELL (steadily controlling his suspense). Then?

MARCHBANKS (prosaically slipping down into a quite ordinary attitude in
the chair). Then she couldn't bear being read to any longer.

MORELL. And you approached the gate of Heaven at last?

MARCHBANKS. Yes.

MORELL. Well? (Fiercely.) Speak, man: have you no feeling for me?

MARCHBANKS (softly and musically). Then she became an angel; and there
was a flaming sword that turned every way, so that I couldn't go in;
for I saw that that gate was really the gate of Hell.

MORELL (triumphantly). She repulsed you!

MARCHBANKS (rising in wild scorn). No, you fool: if she had done that I
should never have seen that I was in Heaven already. Repulsed me! You
think that would have saved me-