precise amount the Governor said. If it ought to
be less on account of that little affair last night--why, we should be
the last people in the world to haggle over a few thousand pounds--

ETHEL [with a cry of rage and relief]. Oh! That is the final word of my
humiliation! I felt that you were in shame and dishonor, and, because of
that, I was ready to keep my word--to stand by you, to help you make
yourself into something like a man--to give my life to you. That you
permitted the sacrifice was enough! Now you ask me to PAY for the
privilege of making it, I am released! I am free! _I am not that man's
property to give away!_

LADY CREECH [violently]. You're beside yourself. Isn't this what we've
been wanting all the time?

ALMERIC. But slow up a bit--didn't you say you'd stick?

ETHEL. Any promise I ever made to you is a thousand times cancelled.
This is final!

[With concentrated rage, turning to PIKE.]

And as for you--never presume to speak to me again!

ALMERIC [to LADY CREECH]. Most extraordinary girl--she's rather
dreadful, _isn't_ she?

LADY CREECH [with agitation]. Give me your arm, Almeric.

[They go into the hotel.]

ETHEL [to PIKE]. What have you to say to me?

[PIKE raises his hands slowly, with palms outward, and drops them.]

ETHEL. What explanation have you to make?

PIKE. None.

ETHEL. That's because you don't care what I think of you. [Bitterly.]
Indeed, you've already shown that, when you were willing to give me up
to those people, and to let me pay them for taking me! You let me
romanticize to you about honor and duty and sympathy--about my efforts
to make that creature a man--and you pretended to sympathize with me,
and you knew all the time it was only the money they were after!

PIKE [humbly]. Well, I shouldn't be surprised.

ETHEL. Didn't you have the faint little understanding of me enough to
see that their asking for money, now--would horrify me? Didn't you know
that your consenting to it, leaving me free to give it to them, would
release me--make me free to deny everything to them?

PIKE [slowly]. Well, I shouldn't be surprised if I _had_ seen that.

ETHEL [staggered]. You mean you've been saving me again from myself,
from my silliness, from my romanticism, that you've given me another
revelation of the falsity, the unreality of my attitude toward these
people, and toward life.

PIKE [placatingly]. No, no!

ETHEL [vehemently]. You'd always say that, you'd always deny i