And what are you angry with yourself for?
GERALD. I'm angry with myself for being myself--I always was that.
I was always a curse to myself.
ANABEL. And that's why you curse others so much?
GERALD. You talk as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.
ANABEL. You see, Gerald, there has to be a change. You'll have to
change.
GERALD. Change of heart?--Well, it won't be to get softer, Anabel.
ANABEL. You needn't be softer. But you can be quieter, more sane
even. There ought to be some part of you that can be quiet and apart
from the world, some part that can be happy and gentle.
GERALD. Well, there isn't. I don't pretend to be able to extricate
a soft sort of John Halifax, Gentleman, out of the machine I'm mixed
up in, and keep him to gladden the connubial hearth. I'm angry, and
I'm angry right through, and I'm not going to play bo-peep with
myself, pretending not to be.
ANABEL. Nobody asks you to. But is there no part of you that can be
a bit gentle and peaceful and happy with a woman?
GERALD. No, there isn't.--I'm not going to smug with you--no, not I.
You're smug in your coming back. You feel virtuous, and expect me to
rise to it. I won't.
ANABEL. Then I'd better have stayed away.
GERALD. If you want me to virtuise and smug with you, you had.
ANABEL. What DO you want, then?
GERALD. I don't know. I know I don't want THAT.
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