Parbury monologue (Act 4) — The Tyranny of Tears: A Comedy in Four Acts

I don't want ever to think or speak of it again; but to-day I must, for if we are honest with each other, we may be able in time to save ourselves from that most pitiable and hideous of all states of existence--what is called "a cat and dog life." Have you never seen it--that domestic flower with the rotten heart? The thin outside petals of courtesy, of hollow words of endearment before others, mask the ugly truth from the casual and unobservant; but the intimate friends know, and the prying eyes of the spiteful are undeceived. That man and woman who appear in public wearing the veneered ghost of a smile, are walking in hell. Think of their private lives--the slow death of love; the hearts poisoned with bitterness; the ever-growing rancour; the bandied insolences; the swift thoughts, black as murder; the final dull monotony of aching hatred. Do you think such cases rare? Every rank of society has its examples. Do you think such a couple have deliberately sought their hell? Oh no; they may have started as fairly as we did. Their love has not been slain by a blow, it has been pecked to a cupboard skeleton by littlenesses--little jealousies, little selfishnesses, little insults, little tyrannies, little intolerances.