LORD GORING. Robert, you love your wife, don't you?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I love her more than anything in the world. I used to think ambition the great thing. It is not. Love is the great thing in the world. There is nothing but love, and I love her. But I am defamed in her eyes. I am ignoble in her eyes. There is a wide gulf between us now. She has found me out, Arthur, she has found me out.
LORD GORING. Has she never in her life done some folly-some indiscretion-that she should not forgive your sin?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. My wife! Never! She does not know what weakness or temptation is. I am of clay like other men. She stands apart as good women do-pitiless in her perfection-cold and stern and without mercy.
But I love her, Arthur. We are childless, and I have no one else to love, no one else to love me. Perhaps if God had sent us children she might have been kinder to me. But God has given us a lonely house. And she has cut my heart in two. Don't let us talk of it. I was brutal to her this evening. But I suppose when sinners talk to saints they are brutal always. I said to her things that were hideously true, on my side, from my stand-point, from the standpoint of men. But don't let us talk of that.
LORD GORING. Your wife will forgive you. Perhaps at this moment she is forgiving you. She loves you, Robert. Why should she not forgive?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. God grant it! God grant it! [Buries his face in his hands.] But there is something more I have to tell you, Arthur.
[Enter PHIPPS with drinks.] PHIPPS. [Hands hock and seltzer to SIR ROBERT CHILTERN.] Hock and seltzer, sir.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Thank you.
LORD GORING. Is your carriage here, Robert?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. No; I walked from the club.
LORD GORING. Sir Robert will take my cab, Phipps.
PHIPPS. Yes, my lord. [Exit.]
LORD GORING. Robert, you don't mind my sending you away?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Arthur, you must let me stay for five minutes. I have made up my mind what I am going to do to-night in the House. The debate on the Argentine Canal is to begin at eleven. [A chair falls in the drawing-room.] What is that?
LORD GORING. Nothing.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I heard a chair fall in the next room. Some one has been listening.
LORD GORING. No, no; there is no one there.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There is some one. There are lights in the room, and the door is ajar. Some one has been listening to every secret of my life. Arthur, what does this mean?