Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/240

. On the other hand, you speak freely, you talk like a woman—like our women. This is what I have heard all my life: "Patience, craft, intrigue! Other men have succeeded; you can learn to do the same, to live." Yes, to live amid the rustle of skirts! Isn't it true? Our Spanish life!—burrowing in offices and antechambers, but fighting out in the open, in the broad daylight, relying on one's own strength, without treachery to oneself, and never so much as a single lie to another—never, never that! That requires superhuman courage. Never!—not even for a man who would die for your sake.

. I see that plainly.

. Yes, and accomplish things of which he never believed himself capable, because I, too, was brought up as you were, to resignation, to expect everything of others, and, until I loved you, I was not conscious that I had strength to live my own life, to live it in spite of others, in spite of the cowardice to which I was brought up. But when my will was the strongest, I relied on you to support me, so that we might fight together for our love, for our happiness, for our children, that they might not be condemned to suffer as we have done. At the cost of appearing ingrates, even to our mothers, we shall have assured them the right to be happy, we shall have freed them from the necessity of sacrificing their hearts, as now you would sacrifice ours.

. No, I wouldn't, Julio; I am not the one.

. Who is it, then?

. You, you… it is you. Give it up for my sake.

. I will not give it up. You don't know what the will of a weak man is, when for the first time in his life he discovers that he has a will. Decide! Choose this very instant!