ERNEST: How did you ever meet Metchnikof...

ERNEST: How did you ever meet Metchnikoff?

HELEN: (chaffing) I had worked under Hamilton! They all wanted to meet me.

ERNEST (with an unmistakable look) Um ... was that why? (Fleeing danger.) Didn't you let them know your part in that discovery? Why, if it hadn't been for you, I should never have stumbled upon the thing at all.

HELEN: Oh, I know my place too well for that! Talk about artistic temperament, you scientists are worse than prima donnas.

ERNEST: (takes printers' proofs out of pocket, hands them to her in silence) Some proofs of a monograph I was correcting on the train. Mind hammering those loose sentences of mine into decent English? You can write—I can't.

HELEN: (reading innocently) "Recent Experiments in Anterior Poliomyelitis by Ernest Hamilton, M.D., Ph.D., and Helen"—what! why, you've put my name with yours!

ERNEST: Well, if you object—like a prima donna——(Takes out pencil to mark on proof.)

HELEN: (snatching proofs away) Object? Why, this makes my reputation in the scientific world.

ERNEST: Well, didn't you make mine?

Helen: (still glowing with pride, but touched by his unexpected generosity) You can't imagine what this means to me. It's so hard for a woman to get any recognition. Most men have but one use for us. If we get interested in anything but them it is "unwomanly"—they call it "a fad." But they've got to take me seriously now. My name with Ernest Hamilton's! (Points to her name and swaggers back and forth.)

ERNEST: (bantering) But then, you see, you are a very exceptional woman. Why, you have a mind like a man.

HELEN: Like a man? (Coming close to him, tempting him.) If you had a mind like a woman you would know better than to say that to me!

ERNEST: (raises eyebrows) They all take for granted that I want to make love to you. (Smiles but avoids her eyes.)

HELEN: (avoids his) Well, you took for granted that I wanted you to!... You are about the most conceited man I ever knew.

ERNEST: How can I help it when you admire me so? HELEN: I? Admire you?

ERNEST: You're always telling me what great things I'm going to do—stimulating me, pushing me along. Why, after you left, everything went slump. Tell me, why did you leave? Was I rude to you? Did I hurt your feelings?

HELEN: Not in the least. It was entirely out of respect for your feelings.

ERNEST: My feelings? (Laughing.) Oh, I see. You got it into your head that I wanted to marry you!

HELEN: Men sometimes do.

ERNEST: (looks away) I suppose they do.

HELEN: It's been known to happen.

ERNEST: Talk about conceit! Well, you needn't be afraid! I'll never ask you to marry me.

HELEN: (turns and looks at him a moment) You can't imagine what a weight this takes off my mind. (She looks away and sighs.)

ERNEST: (enthusiastically) Yes! I feel as if a veil between us had been lifted. (He looks away and sighs too. Some one begins "Tristan and Isolde" on the piano within. The moon is up.)

HELEN: (after a pause) Suppose we talk about—our work.

ERNEST: Yes! Our work. Let's drop the other subject. Look at the moon! (Music and the moonlight flooding them.)

HELEN: Seriously, you promise never to mention the subject again? (She keeps her eyes averted.)

ERNEST: I promise. (He keeps his eyes averted.)

HELEN: (turning to him with a sudden change to girlish enthusiasm) Then I'll go to Paris with you!

ERNEST: (recoils) What's that?

HELEN: Why, Doctor Metchnikoff—he promised me he would invite you.

ERNEST: Yes, but—

HELEN: Don't miss the chance of a lifetime!

ERNEST: No, but you—you can't come!

HELEN: (simply) If you need me I can, and you just said——

ERNEST: But you mustn't come to Paris with me!

HELEN: Don't you want me with you?

ERNEST: You are to stay at home and run the department for me.

HELEN: (stepping back) Don't you want me with you?

ERNEST: (stepping forward, with his heart in voice) Do I want you! (Stops.) But I am a man—you are a woman.

HELEN: What of it? Are you one of those small men who care what people say? No! That's not your reason! (She sees that it is not.) What is it? You must tell me.

ERNEST: (hesitates) It's only for your sake.

HELEN: (with feeling) Think of all I've done for your sake. You wouldn't be going yourself but for me! I was the one to see you needed it, I proposed it to Metchnikoff—I urged him—made him ask you—for your sake! And now am I to be left at home like a child because you don't care to be embarrassed with me?

ERNEST: Oh, please! This is so unfair. But I simply can't take you now.

HELEN: (with growing scorn) Oh! You are all alike. You pile work upon me until I nearly drop, you play upon my interest, my sympathy—you get all you can out of me—my youth, my strength, my best! And then, just as I, too, have a chance to arrive in my profession, you, of all men, throw me over! I hate men. I hate you!

ERNEST: And I love you!

(They stare at each other in silence, the moonlight flooding Helen's face, the music coming clear).

HELEN: (in an awed whisper, stepping back slowly) I've done it! I've done it! I knew I'd do it!

ERNEST: No. I did it. Forgive me. I had to do it.

HELEN: Oh, and this spoils everything!

ERNEST: (comes closer) No! It glorifies everything! (He breaks loose.) I have loved you from the first day you came and looked up at me for orders. I didn't want you there; I didn't want any woman there. I tried to tire you out with overwork but couldn't. I tried to drive you out by rudeness, but you stayed. And that made me love you more. Oh, I love you! I love you! I love you!

HELEN: Don't; oh, don't love me!

ERNEST: (still closer) Why, I never knew there could be women like you. I thought women were merely something to be wanted and worshiped, petted and patronized. But now—why, I love everything about you: your wonderful, brave eyes that face the naked facts of life and are not ashamed; those beautiful hands that toiled so long, so well, so close to mine and not afraid, not afraid!

HELEN: You mustn't! I am afraid now! I made you say it. (Smiling and crying.) I have always wanted to make you say it. I have always sworn you shouldn't.

ERNEST: (pained) Because you cannot care enough?

HELEN: Enough?... Too much.

ERNEST: (overwhelmed) You—love—me!

(He takes her in his arms, a silent embrace with only the bland blasé moon looking on).

HELEN: It is because I love you that I didn't want you to say it—only I did. It is because I love you that I went abroad—to stay, only I couldn't! I couldn't stay away! (She holds his face in her hands.) Oh, do you know how I love you? No!... you're only a man!

ERNEST: (kissing her rapturously) Every day there in the laboratory, when you in your apron—that dear apron which I stole from your locker when you left me—when you asked for orders—did you know that I wanted to say: "Love me"! Every day when you took up your work, did you never guess that I wanted to take you up in my arms?

HELEN: (smiling up into his face) Why didn't you?

ERNEST: Thank God I didn't! For while we worked there together I came to know you as few men ever know the women they desire. Woman can be more than sex, as man is more than sex. And all this makes man and woman not less but more overwhelmingly desirable and necessary to each other, and makes both things last—not for a few years, but forever!

Citation: Jesse Lynch Williams, Why Marry, Public Domain, 1914 pp. 91-102.