Page:Wilde - A Woman of no Importance, 1909.djvu/179

RhACT IV. MRS. ARBUTHNOT I will not marry him.

GERALD But you don't understand: it is for your sake I am talking, not for mine. This marriage, this necessary marriage, this marriage which for obvious reasons must inevitably take place, will not help me, will not give me a name that will be really, rightly mine to bear. But surely it will be something for you, that you, my mother, should, however late, become the wife of the man who is my father. Will not that be something?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT I will not marry him.

GERALD Mother, you must.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT I will not. You talk of atonement for a wrong done. What atonement can be made to me? There is no atonement possible. I am disgraced: he is not. That 161