Evans
[Passionately—hardly able to believe his ears]
Oh, it’d be wonderful, Nina ! But are you sure you really want me to—that you’ll feel well enough?
Nina
[Repeats his words as if she were memorizing a lesson]
Yes, I want you to. Yes, I’ll feel well enough.
[He seizes her hand and kisses it in a passionately grateful silence]
[She thinks with resigned finality]
There, Sammy’s mother and Gordon . . . I’ll play the game . . . it will make him happy for a while . . . as he was in those weeks after we’d left his mother . . . when I gave myself with a mad pleasure in torturing myself for his pleasure! . . .
[Then with weary hopelessness]
He’ll be happy until he begins to feel guilty again because I’m not pregnant . . .
[With a grim bitter smile]
Poor Sam, if he only knew the precautions . . . as if I wouldn’t die rather than take the slightest chance of that happening! . . . ever again . . . what a tragic joke it was on both of us! . . . I wanted my baby so! . . . oh, God! . . . his mother said . . . “You’ve got to have a healthy baby . . . sometime . . . it’s your rightful duty”. . . that seemed right then . . . but now . . . it seems cowardly . . . to betray poor Sam . . . and vile to give myself . . . without love or desire . . . and yet I’ve given myself to men before without a thought just to give them a moment’s happiness . . . can’t I do that again? . . . when it’s a case of Sam’s happiness? . . . and my own? . . .
