part of what's wrong is that John's been to Salem once already, and there he saw Abigail. Elizabeth must be wondering if it really is over between her husband and this girl; maybe he went to see her again and that's why he was late. What she's really worried about is John still loves Abigail, but Elizabeth doesn't yet have a good reason to accuse him of this directly. Besides, John hasn't been to town in more than a week. But Mary Warren has, and the stories she brings back are hard to believe. Elizabeth is carefully working up something as she tells John about the court, the judges, the fourteen people already in jail, the talk of hanging. Who's the cause of this madness? "Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel."You see what's happened? While we're waiting for Elizabeth to spring the name of Abigail, Arthur Miller has slipped the exposition in by the side door, as it were.Elizabeth puts her husband to a test: he must go to town and tell them this witchcraft business is a fraud. Of course he hesitates, afraid no one will believe him. But Elizabeth doesn't see it that way: "John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt, would you falter now? I think not."Now its out. But Proctor's fed up with her suspicion and her coldness, and tells her bluntly, "Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any more.... Learn charity, woman."Suppose you've done something you're ashamed of, something that badly hurt a person you love very much. You can say that you're sorry and you'll never do it again, and you'll try everything you can think of to make up for it. Of course you know things may never be the same again, but when months go by and the person you hurt still hasn't forgiven you, it's understandable that you'd begin to resent it. This is how John Proctor feels.It's easy to sympathize with him in this scene. He did wrong, but he confessed...
