_Isabel_. Oh, don’t say that! I’ve lived on it!
_Isabel_. On your letting everything go--but the right.
_Oberville_. Oh, hang the right! What is truth? We had the right to be happy!
_Isabel (with rising emotion)_. I used to think so sometimes.
_Oberville_. Did you? Triple fool that I was!
_Oberville_. Why, good God, we belonged to each other--and I let you go! It’s fabulous. I’ve fought for things since that weren’t worth a crooked sixpence; fought as well as other men. And you--you--I lost you because I couldn’t face a scene! Hang it, suppose there’d been a dozen scenes--I might have survived them. Men have been known to. They’re not necessarily fatal.
_Oberville_. It’s a form of fear that women don’t understand. How you must have despised me!
_Oberville_. I was a damned coward, Isabel. That’s about the size of it.
_Isabel_. Ah--I had thought it so much larger!
_Isabel_. I said that you have forgotten to drink your tea. It must be quite cold.
_Oberville (collecting himself)_. No--no. This is perfect.
_Oberville (falling into her mood) _. You always made it to perfection. Only you never gave me enough sugar.
_Isabel_. I know better now. (_She puts another lump in his cup_.)
_Oberville (drinks his tea, and then says, with an air of reproach)_. Isn’t all this chaff rather a waste of time between two old friends who haven’t met for so many years?
_Isabel (lightly)_. Oh, it’s only a _hors d’oeuvre_--the tuning of the instruments. I’m out of practise too.
_Oberville_. Let us come to the grand air, then. (_Sits down near her_.) Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?
_Isabel_. At this moment? You’ll never guess. I’m trying to remember you.
_Isabel_. Until you came into the room just now my recollection of you was so vivid; you were a living whole in my thoughts. Now I am engaged in gathering up the fragments--in laboriously reconstructing you....
_Oberville_. I have changed so much, then?
_Isabel_. No, I don’t believe that you’ve changed. It’s only that I see you differently. Don’t you know how hard it is to convince elderly people that the type of the evening paper is no smaller than when they were young?
_Isabel_. You couldn’t have grown bigger. Oh, I’m serious now; you needn’t prepare a smile. For years you were the tallest object on my horizon. I used to climb to the thought of you, as people who live in a flat country mount the church steeple for a view. It’s wonderful how much I used to see from there! And the air was so strong and pure!