RIDGEON [with a sweep of his hand towards the pictures] He is not dead.
He is there. [Taking up the book] And there.

JENNIFER [springing up with blazing eyes] Put that down. How dare you
touch it?

Ridgeon, amazed at the fierceness of the outburst, puts it down with a
deprecatory shrug. She takes it up and looks at it as if he had profaned
a relic.

RIDGEON. I am very sorry. I see I had better go.

JENNIFER [putting the book down] I beg your pardon. I forgot myself. But
it is not yet--it is a private copy.

RIDGEON. But for me it would have been a very different book.

JENNIFER. But for you it would have been a longer one.

RIDGEON. You know then that I killed him?

JENNIFER [suddenly moved and softened] Oh, doctor, if you acknowledge
that--if you have confessed it to yourself--if you realize what you
have done, then there is forgiveness. I trusted in your strength
instinctively at first; then I thought I had mistaken callousness for
strength. Can you blame me? But if it was really strength--if it was
only such a mistake as we all make sometimes--it will make me so happy
to be friends with you again.

RIDGEON. I tell you I made no mistake. I cured Blenkinsop: was there any
mistake there?

JENNIFER. He recovered. Oh, dont be foolishly proud, doctor. Confess to
a failure, and save our friendship. Remember, Sir Ralph gave Louis your
medicine; and it made him worse.

RIDGEON. I cant be your friend on false pretences. Something has got me
by the throat: the truth must come out. I used that medicine myself on
Blenkinsop. It did not make him worse. It is a dangerous medicine: it
cured Blenkinsop: it killed Louis Dubedat. When I handle it, it cures.
When another man handles it, it kills--sometimes.

JENNIFER [naively: not yet taking it all in] Then why did you let Sir
Ralph give it to Louis?

RIDGEON. I'm going to tell you. I did it because I was in love with you.

JENNIFER [innocently surprised] In lo-- You! elderly man!

RIDGEON [thunderstruck, raising his fists to heaven] Dubedat: thou
art avenged! [He drops his hands and collapses on the bench]. I never
thought of that. I suppose I appear to you a ridiculous old fogey.

JENNIFER. But surely--I did not mean to offend you, indeed--but you must
be at least twenty years older than I am.

RIDGEON. Oh, quite. More, perhaps. In twenty years you will understand
how little difference that makes.

JENNIFER. But even so, how could you think that I--his wife-