CHARTERIS (enraptured). My own Julia! (He attempts to embrace her.)

JULIA (recoiling--he catching her hands and holding them). How dare
you! Are you mad? Do you wish me to call Dr. Paramore?

CHARTERIS. Call everybody, my darling--everybody in London. Now I
shall no longer have to be brutal--to defend myself--to go in fear of
you. How I have looked forward to this day! You know now that I don't
want you to marry me or to love me: Paramore can have all that. I only
want to look on and rejoice disinterestedly in the happiness of
(kissing her hand) my dear Julia (kissing the other), my beautiful
Julia. (She tears her hands away and raises them as if to strike him,
as she did the night before at Cuthbertson's.) No use to threaten me
now: I am not afraid of those hands--the loveliest hands in the world.

JULIA. How have you the face to turn round like this after insulting
and torturing me!

CHARTERIS. Never mind, dearest: you never did understand me; and you
never will. Our vivisecting friend has made a successful experiment at
last.

JULIA (earnestly). It is you who are the vivisector--a far crueller,
more wanton vivisector than he.

CHARTERIS. Yes; but then I learn so much more from my experiments than
he does! And the victims learn as much as I do. That's where my moral
superiority comes in.

JULIA (sitting down again on the couch with rueful humour). Well, you