STRANGWAY. [Smiling] One of these days the flowers will grow out of
me; and I shall sleep.
[MRS. BRADMERE stares at his smiling face a long moment in
silence, then with a little sound, half sniff, half snort, she
goes to the door. There she halts.]
MRS. BRADMERE. And you mean to let all this go on----Your wife----
STRANGWAY. Go! Please go!
MRS. BRADMERE. Men like you have been buried at cross-roads before
now! Take care! God punishes!
STRANGWAY. Is there a God?
MRS. BRADMERE. Ah! [With finality] You must see a doctor.
[Seeing that the look on his face does not change, she opens the
door, and hurries away into the moonlight.]
[STRANGWAY crosses the room to where his wife's picture hangs,
and stands before it, his hands grasping the frame. Then he
takes it from the wall, and lays it face upwards on the window
seat.]
STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! What is there, now?
[The sound of an owl's hooting is floating in, and of voices
from the green outside the inn.]
STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! Taken faith--hope--life!
[JIM BERE comes wandering into the open doorway.]
JIM BERE. Gude avenin', zurr.
[At his slow gait, with his feeble smile, he comes in, and
standing by the window-seat beside the long dark coat that still
lies there, he looks down at STRANGWAY with his lost eyes.
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