e with me?

MORELL (grimly). Oh, he has no suspicion of it himself, hasn't he?

CANDIDA. Not a bit. (She takes her arms from his knee, and turns
thoughtfully, sinking into a more restful attitude with her hands in
her lap.) Some day he will know when he is grown up and experienced,
like you. And he will know that I must have known. I wonder what he
will think of me then.

MORELL. No evil, Candida. I hope and trust, no evil.

CANDIDA (dubiously). That will depend.

MORELL (bewildered). Depend!

CANDIDA (looking at him). Yes: it will depend on what happens to him.
(He look vacantly at her.) Don't you see? It will depend on how he
comes to learn what love really is. I mean on the sort of woman who
will teach it to him.

MORELL (quite at a loss). Yes. No. I don't know what you mean.

CANDIDA (explaining). If he learns it from a good woman, then it will
be all right: he will forgive me.

MORELL. Forgive!

CANDIDA. But suppose he learns it from a bad woman, as so many men do,
especially poetic men, who imagine all women are angels! Suppose he
only discovers the value of love when he has thrown it away and
degraded himself in his ignorance. Will he forgive me then, do you
think?

MORELL. Forgive you for what?

CANDIDA (realizing how stupid he is, and a little disappointed, though
quite tenderly so). Don't you understand? (He shakes his head. She
turns to him again, so as to explain with the fondest intimacy.) I
mean, will he forgive me for not teaching him myself? For abandoning
him to the bad women for the sake of my goodness--my purity, as you
call it? Ah, James, how little you understand me, to talk of your
confidence in my goodness and purity! I would give them both to poor
Eugene as willingly as I would give my shawl to a beggar dying of cold,
if there were nothing else to restrain me. Put your trust in my love
for you, James, for if that went, I should care very little for your
sermons--mere phrases that you cheat yourself and others with every
day. (She is about to rise.)

MORELL. HIS words!

CANDIDA (checking herself quickly in the act of getting up, so that she
is on her knees, but upright). Whose words?

MORELL. Eugene's.

CANDIDA (delighted). He is always right. He understands you; he
understands me; he understands Prossy; and you, James--you understand
nothing. (She laughs, and kisses him to console him. He recoils as if
stung, and springs up.)

MORELL. How can you bear to do that when--oh,