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LAURA
(Passionately.)George Selby, do you dare [to] talk to me like this?
COL. SELBY
Dare? Why what can you do?
LAURA
The law shall teach you what I can do.
COL. SELBY
The law! Well this is innocence, that most noble sham the law!
LAURA
The law can protect me, and it shall.
COL. SELBY
Of course it will. Ha! Ha! It has been tried so often. It always sends the man away with a pious warning against future designing women and tells the woman if she sins again, she'd better beware. O, go to the law, by all means. Fool! Why if my Wife were dead and buried in the bottom of the sea, I would not mate with your sort.
LAURA
(Walks the stage frenzied.)Oh! This is infamous! Infamous!
[COL. SELBY
The law—ha, ha, ha.]
LAURA
To the winds with the law. I was a woman, weak and humble, but I am a devil now. You lied to me, betrayed me, jeered at me, and yet you venture here! Fool, idiot, to bare your head to the lightning of my wrath—
COL. SELBY
(Much agitated.)Peace child, you are—
LAURA
Mad! and you have made me so. Do you know what it is to drive a woman like me to madness? [
(Enter John Peterson.)
] It is death !
(Takes pistol from her pocket & shoots
him. He falls. She kneels over the body,
caresses it, looks up with a vacant stare.)I have killed the only man I ever loved.
(Enter SELLERS, LAFAYETTE
& [EMILY. Others rush on].)[SELLERS]
Laura, Laura, what is it?
LAURA
It is death!
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