ANABEL.  How can you say so?  There—­you see—­there—­this is the man that pretends to love me, and then says I keep a dagger up my sleeve.  You liar!

GERALD.  I do love you—­and you do keep a dagger up your sleeve—­some devilish little female reservation which spies at me from a distance, in your soul, all the time, as if I were an enemy.

ANABEL.  How CAN you say so?—­Doesn’t it show what you must be yourself?  Doesn’t it show?—­What is there in your soul?

GERALD.  I don’t know.

ANABEL.  Love, pure love?—­Do you pretend it’s love?

GERALD.  I’m so tired of this.

ANABEL.  So am I, dead tired:  you self-deceiving, self complacent thing.  Ha!—­aren’t you just the same?  You haven’t altered one scrap not a scrap.

GERALD.  All right—­you are always free to change yourself.

ANABEL.  I HAVE changed I AM better, I DO love you—­I love you wholly and unselfishly—­I do—­and I want a good new life with you.

GERALD.  You’re terribly wrapped up in your new goodness.  I wish you’d make up your mind to be downright bad.

ANABEL.  Ha!—­Do you?—­You’d soon see.  You’d soon see where you’d be if—–­ There’s somebody coming. (Rises.)

GERALD.  Never mind; it’s the clerks leaving work, I suppose.  Sit still.

ANABEL.  Won’t you go?

GERALD.  No. (A man draws near, followed by another.)

CLERK.  Good evening, sir. (Passes on.) Good evening, Mr. Barlow.

ANABEL.  They are afraid.

GERALD.  I suppose their consciences are uneasy about this strike.

ANABEL.  Did you come to sit here just to catch them, like a spider waiting for them?

GERALD.  No.  I wanted to speak to Breffitt.

ANABEL.  I believe you’re capable of any horridness.

GERALD.  All right, you believe it. (Two more figures approach.)
Good evening.

CLERKS.  Good night, sir. (One passes, one stops.) Good evening,
Mr. Barlow.  Er—­did you want to see Mr. Breffitt, sir?

GERALD.  Not particularly.

CLERK.  Oh!  He’ll be out directly, sir—­if you’d like me to go back and tell him you wanted him?

GERALD.  No, thank you.

CLERK.  Good night, sir.  Excuse me asking.

GERALD.  Good night.

ANABEL.  Who is Mr. Breffitt?

GERALD.  He is the chief clerk—­and cashier—­one of father’s old pillars of society.

ANABEL.  Don’t you like him?

GERALD.  Not much.

ANABEL.  Why?—­You seem to dislike very easily.

GERALD.  Oh, they all used to try to snub me, these old buffers.  They detest me like poison, because I am different from father.

ANABEL.  I believe you enjoy being detested.

GERALD.  I do. (Another clerk approaches—­hesitates—­stops.)

CLERK.  Good evening, sir.  Good evening, Mr. Barlow.  Er—­did you want anybody at the office, sir?  We’re just closing.