Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/313

. You talk like a fool. There never was any conspiracy. Isabel did not influence my wife, although, of course, she knew all about it, nor did my wife influence me. Why should we wish to make you the laughing-stock of the office, not to say of all Madrid?

. You have been admirably successful, however. And you have transformed my house into a dumb hell, which is the worst kind of hell.

. Hell?

. Yes, and you know it. Isabel never opens her mouth, but her air of martyred resignation is a perpetual accusation, which I do not intend to tolerate. My nerves are on edge; I am determined to have done with it. I prefer to have her talk; let her get angry if she wants to. Such exaggerated resignation is too much like indifference or contempt—it is downright selfishness. Whatever it is, it is a poor indication of love.

. Either you misjudge Isabel, or you misjudge yourself, when you imagine that she could have accomplished by protest what she failed to accomplish by resignation. When love absents itself and grows cold, how detain it in its flight? By threats, perhaps, by force? By murder and sudden death? When the bird leaves the cage, how recall him as he flies? Either you must shoot him, resolved that he will be yours or belong to nobody, in which case you will surely recover him, but you will recover him dead, or otherwise, if you prefer him as he was, you have no recourse but to wait—to wait until the cage shall seem sweeter in his eyes than the liberty which he has enjoyed.

. I did not know that you were a poet. It is a new side to your genius, unsuspected hitherto.

. We never learn to know each other fully. I am not a poet, but I understand Isabel's heart better than you