WEDGECROFT.  Good night. [Seeing the tears in her eyes.] Oh, don’t grieve.

FRANCES.  One shouldn’t be sorry when people die, I know.  But she liked me more than I liked her ... [This time TREBELL does laugh, silently.] ... so I somehow feel in her debt and unable to pay now.

TREBELL. [An edge on his voice.] Yes ... people keep on dying at all sorts of ages, in all sorts of ways.  But we seem never to get used to it ... narrow-minded as we are.

WEDGECROFT.  Don’t you talk nonsense.

TREBELL. [One note sharper yet.] One should occasionally test one’s sanity by doing so.  If we lived in the logical world we like to believe in, I could also prove that black was white.  As it is ... there are more ways of killing a cat than hanging it.

WEDGECROFT.  Had I better give you a sleeping draught?

FRANCES.  Are you doctoring him for once?  Henry, have you at last managed to overwork yourself?

TREBELL.  No ...  I started the evening by a charming little dinner at the Van Meyer’s ... sat next to Miss Grace Cutler, who is writing a vie intime of Louis Quinze and engaged me with anecdotes of the same.

FRANCES.  A champion of her sex, whom I do not like.

WEDGECROFT.  She’s writing such a book to prove that women are equal to anything.

      He goes towards the door and FRANCES goes with him. TREBELL never
      turns his head.

TREBELL.  I shall not come and open the door for you ... but mind you shut it.

      FRANCES comes back.

FRANCES.  Henry ... this is dreadful about that poor little woman.

TREBELL.  An unwelcome baby was arriving.  She got some quack to kill her.

      These exact words are like a blow in the face to her, from which,
      being a woman of brave common sense, she does not shrink.

TREBELL.  What do you say to that?

      She walks away from him, thinking painfully.

FRANCES.  She had never had a child.  There’s the common-place thing to say....  Ungrateful little fool!  But....

TREBELL.  If you had been in her place?

FRANCES. [Subtly.] I have never made the mistake of marrying.  She grew frightened, I suppose.  Not just physically frightened.  How can a man understand?

TREBELL.  The fear of life ... do you think it was ... which is the beginning of all evil?

FRANCES.  A woman must choose what her interpretation of life is to be ... as a man must too in his way ... as you and I have chosen, Henry.

TREBELL. [Asking from real interest in her.] Was yours a deliberate choice and do you never regret it?