LORD GORING (with deep feeling in his voice): Do not for that reason set him down now too low. If he has fallen from his altar, do not thrust him into the mire. Failure to Robert would be the very mire of shame. Power is his passion. He would lose everything, even his power to feel love. Your husband’s life is at this moment in your hands, your husband’s love is in your hands. Don’t mar both for him.

Enter SIR ROBERT CHILTERN.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: Gertrude, here is the draft of my letter. Shall I read it to you?

LADY CHILTERN: Let me see it.

SIR ROBERT hands her the letter. She reads it, and then, with a gesture of passion, tears it up.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: What are you doing?

LADY CHILTERN: A man’s life is of more value than a woman’s. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man’s life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: Gertrude! Gertrude!

LADY CHILTERN: You can forget. Men easily forget. And I forgive. That is how women help the world. I see that now.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN (deeply overcome by emotion, embraces her): My wife! My wife! (To LORD GORING): Arthur, it seems that I am always to be in your debt.

LORD GORING: Oh dear no, Robert. Your debt is to Lady Chiltern, not to me!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: I owe you much. And now tell me what you were going to ask me just now as Lord Caversham came in.

LORD GORING: Robert, you are your sister’s guardian, and I want your consent to my marriage with her. That is all.

LADY CHILTERN: Oh, I am so glad! I am so glad! (Shakes hands with LORD GORING.)

LORD GORING: Thank you, Lady Chiltern.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN (with a troubled look): My sister to be your wife?

LORD GORING: Yes.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN (speaking with great firmness): Arthur, I am very sorry, but the thing is quite out of the question. I have to think of Mabel’s future happiness. And I don’t think her happiness would be safe in your hands. And I cannot have her sacrificed!

LORD GORING: Sacrificed!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: Yes, utterly sacrificed. Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.

LORD GORING: But 1 love Mabel. No other woman has any place in my life.