I know it by experience.
But that is not all. You have several others things to confide in me.
Gertrude (aside)
He is a spy! The only thing I can do is to make him my accomplice.
(Aloud) Doctor, you are too useful to me to admit of our quarreling.
In a moment, if you will wait here, I will return and speak frankly to
you.
(Gertrude goes into her chamber and locks the door.)
Vernon
She has turned the key! I am caught, tricked! I cannot after all
resort to violence. What is she doing? She is going to hide her flask
of opium. A man is always wrong when he undertakes to discharge for a
friend the offices which my old friend, this poor General, expects of
me. She is going to entangle me--Ah! Here she comes.
Gertrude (aside)
I have burnt them! There is not a trace left--I am saved! (Aloud)
Doctor!
Vernon
Madame?
Gertrude
My stepdaughter Pauline, whom you believed to be an innocent girl, an
angel, had carried off furtively and criminally something whose
discovery would have compromised the honor and the life of four
persons.
Vernon
Four! (Aside) That is herself, the General--Ah! her son, perhaps--and
the unknown.
Gertrude
This secret, concerning which she is forced to keep silence, even
though it imperilled her life to do so--
Vernon
I don't quite catch your meaning.
Gertrude
In short, the proofs of this secret are now destroyed! And you,
doctor, who love us all, you would be as base, as infamous as she
is--even more so, because you are a man, and have not the insensate
passions of a woman!--You would be a monster if you were to take
another step along the path on which you have now started--
Vernon
You mean that for intimidation? Madame, since civilized society first
sprang into being, the seed which you are sowing has produced a crop
whose name is crime.
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