GERARDO. Helen, you said I should bear the consequences of my acts. Will you reproach for not refusing to receive you when you first came here, ostensibly to ask me to try your voice? What can a man do in such a case? You are the beauty of this town. Either I would be known as the bear among artists who denies himself to all women callers, or I might have received you and pretended that I didn't understand what you meant and then pass for a fool. Or the very first day I might have talked to you as frankly as I am talking now. Dangerous business. You would have called me a conceited idiot. Tell me, Helen--what else could I do?
HELEN [_staring at him with, imploring eyes, shuddering and making an effort to speak_]. O God! O God! Oscar, what would you say if to-morrow I should go and be as happy with another man as I have been with you? Oscar--what would you say?
GERARDO [_after a silence_]. Nothing. [_He looks at his watch._] Helen--
HELEN. Oscar! [_She kneels before him._] For the last time, I implore you.... You don't know what you are doing.... It isn't your fault--but don't let me die.... Save me--save me!
GERARDO [_raising her up_]. Helen, I am not such a wonderful man. How many men have you known? The more men you come to know, the lower all men will fall in your estimation. When you know men better you will not take your life for any one of them. You will not think any more of them than I do of women.
HELEN. I am not like you in that respect.
GERARDO. I speak earnestly, Helen. We don't fall in love with one person or another; we fall in love with our type, which we find everywhere in the world if we only look sharply enough.
HELEN. And when we meet our type, are we sure then of being loved again?
GERARDO [_angrily_]. You have no right to complain of your husband. Was any girl ever compelled to marry against her will? That is all rot. It is only the women who have sold themselves for certain material advantages and then try to dodge their obligations who try to make us believe that nonsense.
HELEN [_smiling_]. They break their contracts.
GERARDO [_pounding his chest_]. When I sell myself, at least I am honest about it.
GERARDO. No! Love is a beastly bourgeois virtue. Love is the last refuge of the mollycoddle, of the coward. In my world every man has his actual value, and when two human beings make up a pact they know exactly what to expect from each other. Love has nothing to do with it, either.