MRS HUSHABYE. I certainly don't understand how your marrying that
object [indicating Mangan] will console you for not being able to
marry Hector.
ELLIE. Perhaps you don't understand why I was quite a nice girl
this morning, and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice.
MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, yes, I do. It's because you have made up your
mind to do something despicable and wicked.
ELLIE. I don't think so, Hesione. I must make the best of my
ruined house.
MRS HUSHABYE. Pooh! You'll get over it. Your house isn't ruined.
ELLIE. Of course I shall get over it. You don't suppose I'm going
to sit down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid
living on a pittance from the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers'
Association. But my heart is broken, all the same. What I mean by
that is that I know that what has happened to me with Marcus will
not happen to me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus
and a lot of other men of whom one is just the same as another.
Well, if I can't have love, that's no reason why I should have
poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money.
MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no YOUNG men with money?
ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the
right to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he
found I could not give it to him.
Pages:
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155