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[Goes towards her.]

LADY CHILTERN. Don't come near me. Don't touch me. I feel as if
you had soiled me for ever. Oh! what a mask you have been wearing
all these years! A horrible painted mask! You sold yourself for
money. Oh! a common thief were better. You put yourself up to sale
to the highest bidder! You were bought in the market. You lied to
the whole world. And yet you will not lie to me.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Rushing towards her.] Gertrude! Gertrude!

LADY CHILTERN. [Thrusting him back with outstretched hands.] No,
don't speak! Say nothing! Your voice wakes terrible memories -
memories of things that made me love you - memories of words that
made me love you - memories that now are horrible to me. And how I
worshipped you! You were to me something apart from common life, a
thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me
finer because you were in it, and goodness more real because you
lived. And now - oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my
ideal! the ideal of my life!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There was your mistake. There was your error.
The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and
all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet
of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love
them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections,
love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the
perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are
wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should
come to cure us - else what use is love at all? All sins, except a
sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless
lives, true Love should pardon. A man's love is like that. It is
wider, larger, more human than a woman's. Women think that they are
making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols
merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to
come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid
that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last
night you ruined my life for me - yes, ruined it! What this woman
asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me. She
offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had
thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with
its hands at my throat. I could have killed it for ever, sent it
back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness
against me. You prevented me. No one but you, you know it. And now
what is there before me but public disgrace, ruin, terrible shame,
the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured life, a lonely
dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no more
ideals of men! let them not put them on alters and bow before them,
or they may ruin other lives as completely as you - you whom I have

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