TREBELL.  Never mind ... you’re here now to hand me half the responsibility, aren’t you?

AMY.  As if I could!  If I have to lie through the night simply shaking with bodily fear much longer ...  I believe I shall go mad.

      This aspect of the matter is meaningless to him.  He returns to the
      practical issue.

TREBELL.  There’s nobody that need be suspecting, is there?

AMY.  My maid sees I’m ill and worried and makes remarks ... only to me so far.  Don’t I look a wreck?  I nearly ran away when I saw Dr. Wedgecroft ... some of these men are so clever.

TREBELL. [Calculating.] Someone will have to be trusted.

AMY. [Burrowing into her little tortured self again.] And I ought to feel as if I had done Justin a great wrong ... but I don’t.  I hate you now; now and then.  I was being myself.  You’ve brought me down.  I feel worthless.

      The last word strikes him.  He stares at her.

TREBELL.  Do you?

AMY. [Pleadingly.] There’s only one thing I’d like you to tell me, Henry ... it isn’t much.  That night we were together ... it was for a moment different to everything that has ever been in your life before, wasn’t it?

TREBELL. [Collecting himself as if to explain to a child.] I must make you understand ...  I must get you to realise that for a little time to come you’re above the law ... above even the shortcomings and contradictions of a man’s affection.

AMY.  But let us have one beautiful memory to share.

TREBELL. [Determined she shall face the cold logic of her position.]
Listen.  I look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of drunkenness.

AMY. [Neither understanding nor wishing to; only shocked and hurt.] You beast.

TREBELL. [With bitter sarcasm.] No, don’t say that.  Won’t it comfort you to think of drunkenness as a beautiful thing?  There are precedents enough ... classic ones.

AMY.  You mean I might have been any other woman.

TREBELL. [Quite inexorable.] Wouldn’t any other woman have served the purpose ... and is it less of a purpose because we didn’t know we had it?  Does my unworthiness then ... if you like to call it so ... make you unworthy now?  I must make you see that it doesn’t.

AMY. [Petulantly hammering at her idée fixe.] But you didn’t love me ... and you don’t love me.

TREBELL. [Keeping his patience.] No ... only within the last five minutes have I really taken the smallest interest in you.  And now I believe I’m half jealous.  Can you understand that?  You’ve been talking a lot of nonsense about your emotions and your immortal soul.  Don’t you see it’s only now that you’ve become a person of some importance to the world ... and why?

AMY. [Losing her patience, childishly.] What do you mean by the World?  You don’t seem to have any personal feelings at all.  It’s horrible you should have thought of me like that.  There has been no other man than you that I would have let come anywhere near me ... not for more than a year.