me a great deal, and brought me some hours of exquisite happiness.

JULIA. Leonard: you confess then that you owe me something?

CHARTERIS (haughtily). No: what I received, I paid. Did you learn
nothing from me?--was there no delight for you in our friendship?

JULIA (vehemently and movingly; for she is now sincere). No. You made
me pay dearly for every moment of happiness. You revenged yourself on
me for the humiliation of being the slave of your passion for me. I
was never sure of you for a moment. I trembled whenever a letter came
from you, lest it should contain some stab for me. I dreaded your
visits almost as much as I longed for them. I was your plaything, not
your companion. (She rises, exclaiming) Oh, there was such suffering
in my happiness that I hardly knew joy from pain. (She sinks on the
piano stool, and adds, as she buries her face in her hands and turns
away from him) Better for me if I had never met you!

CHARTERIS (rising indignantly). You ungenerous wretch! Is this your
gratitude for the way I have just been flattering you? What have I not
endured from you--endured with angelic patience? Did I not find out,
before our friendship was a fortnight old, that all your advanced
views were merely a fashion picked up and followed like any other
fashion, without understanding or meaning a word of them? Did you
not, in spite of your care for your own liberty, set up claims on me
compared to which the claims of the most jealous wife would have been
trifles. Have I a single woman friend whom you have not abused as old,
ugly, vicious--

JULIA (quickly looking up). So they are.