it, and Abigail was put out. And he has "gone tiptoe in this house all seven month since she is gone." But "still an everlasting funeral marches round [Elizabeth's] heart." Nobody's perfect, and enough's enough.Let's not forget, though, that the last time we saw Proctor, he was with Abigail, and he admitted looking up at her window and that he still may think about her softly from time to time. And he did not say, "I don't love you anymore." This is the real issue to Elizabeth--not the wrong he did before or the right he's trying to do now, but how he still feels in his heart about Abigail. We know she's got good reason to worry.^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 2Before this issue can be brought completely out in the open, Mary Warren comes home from court. This scene does several important things: 1) it interrupts John and Elizabeth's argument just when it was coming to a head, keeping us in suspense until they can resume; 2) it brings us new information about the trials and what happens in court; and 3) the poppet Mary gives to Elizabeth sets up the "proof" that will lead to Elizabeth's arrest at the end of the act.NOTE: Of these three things, Mary's descriptions of the trials is most crucial, for now we see how the witchcraft works. A person is cried out for a witch and is arrested and brought into court. We've already seen Hale go to work on Tituba, so we know what court examinations are like--denials are useless. But Mary's story adds a new wrinkle:...she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin' up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and then I hear a voice, a screamin' voice, and it were my voice....The witch has "sent her spirit out" to torment the girls who have accused her. This will turn out to be the most damning evidence against an accused witch. It sounds crazy to us today (as it did to Proctor and some others at the t...
