-virtuous indignation! Oh, you are not
worthy to live in the same world with her. (He turns away
contemptuously to the other side of the room.)

MORELL (who has watched him quietly without changing his place). Do you
think you make yourself more worthy by reviling me, Eugene?

MARCHBANKS. Here endeth the thousand and first lesson. Morell: I don't
think much of your preaching after all: I believe I could do it better
myself. The man I want to meet is the man that Candida married.

MORELL. The man that--? Do you mean me?

MARCHBANKS. I don't mean the Reverend James Mavor Morell, moralist and
windbag. I mean the real man that the Reverend James must have hidden
somewhere inside his black coat--the man that Candida loved. You can't
make a woman like Candida love you by merely buttoning your collar at
the back instead of in front.

MORELL (boldly and steadily). When Candida promised to marry me, I was
the same moralist and windbag that you now see. I wore my black coat;
and my collar was buttoned behind instead of in front. Do you think she
would have loved me any the better for being insincere in my profession?

MARCHBANKS (on the sofa hugging his ankles). Oh, she forgave you, just
as she forgives me for being a coward, and a weakling, and what you
call a snivelling little whelp and all the rest of it. (Dreamily.) A
woman like that has divine insight: she loves our souls, and not our
follies and vanities and illusions, or our collars and coats, or any
other of the rags and tatters we are rolled up in. (He reflects on this
for an instant; then turns intently to question Morell.) What I want to
know is how you got past the flaming sword that stopped me.

MORELL (meaningly). Perhaps because I was not interrupted at the end of
ten minutes.

MARCHBANKS (taken aback). What!

MORELL. Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there
long.

MARCHBANKS. It's false: there can he dwell for ever and there only.
It's in the other moments that he can find no rest, no sense of the
silent glory of life. Where would you have me spend my moments, if not
on the summits?

MORELL. In the scullery, slicing onions and filling lamps.

MARCHBANKS. Or in the pulpit, scrubbing cheap earthenware souls?

MORELL. Yes, that, too. It was there that I earned my golden moment,
and the right, in that moment, to ask her to love me. I did not take
the moment on credit; nor did I use it to steal another man's happiness.

MARCHBANK