JOHN. We'll get on fine, Maggie.
MAGGIE. You're just making the best of it. They say that love is sympathy, and if that's so, mine must be a great love for you, for I see all you are feeling this night and bravely hiding; I feel for you as if I was John Shand myself. [He sighs.]
JOHN. I had best go to the meeting, Maggie.
MAGGIE. Not yet. Can you look me in the face, John, and deny that there is surging within you a mighty desire to be free, to begin the new life untrammelled?
JOHN. Leave such maggots alone, Maggie.
MAGGIE. It's a shame of me not to give you up.
JOHN. I would consider you a very foolish woman if you did.
MAGGIE. If I were John Shand I would no more want to take Maggie Wylie with me through the beautiful door that has opened wide for you than I would want to take an old pair of shoon. Why don't you bang the door in my face, John? [A tremor runs through JOHN.]
JOHN. A bargain's a bargain, Maggie.
[MAGGIE moves about, an eerie figure, breaking into little cries. She flutters round him, threateningly.]
MAGGIE. Say one word about wanting to get out of it, and I'll put the lawyers on you.
JOHN. Have I hinted at such a thing?
MAGGIE. The document holds you hard and fast.
JOHN. It does.
[She gloats miserably.]
MAGGIE. The woman never rises with the man. I'll drag you down, John. I'll drag you down.
JOHN. Have no fear of that, I won't let you. I'm too strong.
MAGGIE. You'll miss the prettiest thing in the world, and all owing to me.
JOHN. What's that?
MAGGIE. Romance.
JOHN. Poof.
MAGGIE. All's cold and grey without it, John. They that have had it have slipped in and out of heaven.
JOHN. You're exaggerating, Maggie.
MAGGIE. You've worked so hard, you've had none of the fun that comes to most men long before they're your age.
JOHN. I never was one for fun. I cannot call to mind, Maggie, ever having laughed in my life.
MAGGIE. You have no sense of humour.
JOHN. Not a spark.
MAGGIE. I've sometimes thought that if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to be fond of me.
JOHN. I remember reading of some one that said it needed a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman's head.
MAGGIE. Yes, that's been said.
JOHN. What beats me, Maggie, is how you could insert a joke with an operation.
[He considers this and gives it up.]
MAGGIE. That's not the kind of fun I was thinking of. I mean fun with the lasses, John--gay, jolly, harmless fun. They could be impudent fashionable beauties now, stretching themselves to attract you, like that hiccoughing little devil, and running away from you, and crooking their fingers to you to run after them.
[He draws a big breath.]
JOHN. No, I never had that.
MAGGIE. It's every man's birthright, and you would have it now but for me.
JOHN. I can do without, Maggie.
MAGGIE. It's like missing out all the Saturdays.
JOHN. You feel sure, I suppose, that an older man wouldn't suit you better, Maggie?
MAGGIE. I couldn't feel surer of anything. You're just my ideal.
JOHN. Yes, yes. Well, that's as it should be.
[She threatens him again.]
MAGGIE. David has the document. It's carefully locked away.
JOHN. He would naturally take good care of it.
[The pride of the Wylies deserts her.]
MAGGIE. John, I make you a solemn promise that, in consideration of the circumstances of our marriage, if you should ever fall in love I'll act differently from other wives.
JOHN. There will be no occasion, Maggie.
[Her voice becomes tremulous.]
MAGGIE. John, David doesn't have the document. He thinks he has, but I have it here.
[Somewhat heavily JOHN surveys the fatal paper.]
JOHN. Well do I mind the look of it, Maggie. Yes, yes, that's it. Umpha.
MAGGIE. You don't ask why I've brought it.
JOHN. Why did you?
MAGGIE. Because I thought I might perhaps have the courage and the womanliness to give it back to you. [JOHN has a brief dream.] Will you never hold it up against me in the future that I couldn't do that?
JOHN.