SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. It would be quite useless.
LORD GORING. May I try?
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Yes; but nothing could make her alter her
views.
LORD GORING. Well, at the worst it would simply be a psychological
experiment.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. All such experiments are terribly dangerous.
LORD GORING. Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't
so, life wouldn't be worth living. . . . Well, I am bound to say that
I think you should have told her years ago.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When? When we were engaged? Do you think she
would have married me if she had known that the origin of my fortune
is such as it is, the basis of my career such as it is, and that I
had done a thing that I suppose most men would call shameful and
dishonourable?
LORD GORING. [Slowly.] Yes; most men would call it ugly names.
There is no doubt of that.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Bitterly.] Men who every day do something of
the same kind themselves. Men who, each one of them, have worse
secrets in their own lives.
LORD GORING. That is the reason they are so pleased to find out
other people's secrets. It distracts public attention from their
own.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did?
No one.
LORD GORING. [Looking at him steadily.] Except yourself, Robert.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [After a pause.] Of course I had private
information about a certain transaction contemplated by the
Government of the day, and I acted on it.
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