erself
into the chair and hiding her face in her hands on the table. The two
men have sprung to their feet.]

CHRIS--[Whimpering like a child.] Anna! Anna! It's lie! It's lie! [He
stands wringing his hands together and begins to weep.]

BURKE--[His whole great body tense like a spring--dully and gropingly.]
So that's what's in it!

ANNA--[Raising her head at the sound of his voice--with extreme mocking
bitterness.] I s'pose you remember your promise, Mat? No other reason
was to count with you so long as I wasn't married already. So I s'pose
you want me to get dressed and go ashore, don't you? [She laughs.] Yes,
you do!

BURKE--[On the verge of his outbreak--stammeringly.] God stiffen you!

ANNA--[Trying to keep up her hard, bitter tone, but gradually letting a
note of pitiful pleading creep in.] I s'pose if I tried to tell you I
wasn't--that--no more you'd believe me, wouldn't you? Yes, you would!
And if I told you that yust getting out in this barge, and being on the
sea had changed me and made me feel different about things,'s if all
I'd been through wasn't me and didn't count and was yust like it never
happened--you'd laugh, wouldn't you? And you'd die laughing sure if I
said that meeting you that funny way that night in the fog, and
afterwards seeing that you was straight goods stuck on me, had got me
to thinking for the first time, and I sized you up as a different kind
of man--a sea man as different from the ones on land as water is from
mud--and that was why I got stuck on you, too. I wanted to marry you
and fool you, but I couldn't. Don't you see how I'd changed? I couldn't
marry you with you believing a lie--and I was shamed to tell you the
truth--till the both of you forced my hand, and I seen you was the same
as all the rest. And now, give me a bawling out and beat it, like I can
tell you're going to. [She stops, looking at BURKE. He is silent, his
face averted, his features beginning to work with fury. She pleads
passionately.] Will you believe it if I tell you that loving you has
made me--clean? It's the straight goods, honest! [Then as he doesn't
reply--bitterly.] Like hell you will! You're like all the rest!

BURKE--[Blazing out--turning on her in a perfect frenzy of rage--his
voice trembling with passion.] The rest, is it? God's curse on you!
Clane, is it? You slut, you, I'll be killing you now! [He picks up the
chair on which he has been sitting and, swinging it high over his
shoulder, springs to