Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/174

 houses: very respectable ones. I'll inquire: of course without letting out that it is for anyone I know. And I'll pay what is necessary. What more can you want?

''Lucie. ''Just when the child is most in need of every care, you propose to send her off alone; alone, do you understand, alone! To tear her away from here, put her into a train, and send her off to Paris, like a sick animal you want to get rid of. If I consented to that I should feel that I was as bad as the man who seduced her. Be honest, Julien: remember it is in our interest you propose to sacrifice her. We shall gain peace and quiet at the price of her loneliness and despair. To save ourselves-serious troubles, I admit-we are to abandon this child to strangers. . . away from all love and care and comfort, without a friend to put kind arms around her and let her sob her grief away. I implore you, Julien, I entreat you, for our children's sake, don't keep me from her, don't ask me to do this shameful thing.

''Brignac. ''There would have been no question of misery if she had behaved herself.

''Lucie. ''She is this man's victim! But she won't go. You'll have to drive her out as you drove out the servant. . . . And then - after that - she is to let her child go; to stifle her strongest instinct; to silence the cry of love that consoles us all for the tortures we have to go through; to turn away her eyes and say, " Take him away, I don't want him." And at that price she is to be forgiven for another person's crime. . . . Then that is Society's welcome to the new born child?

''Brignac. To ''the child born outside of marriage, yes. If it wasn't for that, there would soon be nothing but