MRS. ARBUTHNOT: To whom?

GERALD: To my father. I have written to tell him to come here at four o’clock this afternoon.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: He shall not come here. He shall not cross the threshold of my house.

GERALD: He must come.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: Gerald, if you are going away with Lord Illingworth, go at once. Go before it kills me; but don’t ask me to meet him.

GERALD: Mother, you don’t understand. Nothing in the world would induce me to go away with Lord Illingworth, or to leave you. Surely you know me well enough for that. No; I have written to him to say –

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: What can you have to say to him?

GERALD: Can’t you guess, mother, what I have written in this letter?

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: No.

GERALD: Mother, surely you can. Think, think what must be done, now, at once, within the next few days.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: There is nothing to be done.

GERALD: I have written to Lord Illingworth to tell him that he must marry you.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: Marry me?

GERALD: Mother, I will force him to do it. The wrong that has been done you must be repaired. Atonement must be made. Justice may be slow, mother, but it comes in the end. In a few days you shall be Lord Illingworth’s lawful wife.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: But, Gerald –

GERALD: I will insist upon his doing it. I will make him do it; he will not dare to refuse.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: But, Gerald, it is I who refuse. I will not marry Lord Illingworth.

GERALD: Not marry him? Mother!

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 is all. It is the usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.

GERALD: I don’t know if that is the ordinary ending, mother; I hope it is not. But your life, at any rate, shall not end like that. The man shall make whatever reparation is possible. It is not enough. It does not wipe out the past, I know that. But at least it makes the future better, better for you, mother.