that it would not hurt the feelings of Joanna if she happened to be
passing by, as she nearly always is.

(A little moan from JOANNA'S tree is unnoticed.)

PURDIE. I would rather not say it at all than that way. (He is
touchingly anxious that she should know him as he really is.) I don't
know, Mabel, whether you have noticed that I am not like other men.
(He goes deeply into the very structure of his being.) All my life I
have been a soul that has had to walk alone. Even as a child I had no
hope that it would be otherwise. I distinctly remember when I was six
thinking how unlike other children I was. Before I was twelve I
suffered from terrible self-depreciation; I do so still. I suppose
there never was a man who had a more lowly opinion of himself.

MABEL. Jack, you who are so universally admired.

PURDIE. That doesn't help; I remain my own judge. I am afraid I am a
dark spirit, Mabel. Yes, yes, my dear, let me leave nothing untold
however it may damage me in your eyes. Your eyes! I cannot remember a
time when I did not think of Love as a great consuming passion; I
visualised it, Mabel, as perhaps few have done, but always as the
abounding joy that could come to others but never to me. I expected
too much of women: I suppose I was touched to finer issues than most.
That has been my tragedy.

MABEL. Then you met Joanna.

PURDIE. Then I met Joanna. Yes! Foolishly, as I now see, I thought she
would understand that I was far too deep a nature really to mean the