ave disappointed
several ladies by coming here this afternoon.

QUEX.

Poor women! Nevertheless, pray be careful how you slight the manicure
trade. Crazes die, you know--nails grow.

POLLITT.

[_Tapping his breast._] I think _we_ have come to stay, my lord.

QUEX.

[_Lightly._] Well, you're sailing pretty close to the wind, remember,
you fellows.

POLLITT.

My lord!

QUEX.

[_Replacing his newspaper upon the table._] And if some day you should
find yourselves in the police-court, alongside a poor old woman whose
hand has been crossed with a threepenny-bit down an area--

_The_ DUCHESS _appears on the further side of the low cypress-hedge. She
is dressed for dinner. The sky is now faintly rosy, and during the
ensuing scene it deepens into a rich sunset._

QUEX.

We are going to have a flaming sunset, Duchess.

DUCHESS.

Superb.

POLLITT.

[_Haughtily._] I wish you good evening, my lord.

QUEX.

Oh, good evening, Mr. Valma. [_To himself._] Impudent beggar!

[POLLITT _walks away. After watching his going, the_ DUCHESS _comes
eagerly forward._

DUCHESS.

[_Her hand upon her heart._] Oh! I am here, Harry!

QUEX.

[_In delicate protest._] Ah, my dear Duchess!

DUCHESS.

Fortunately I have been able to dress quickly without exciting
curiosity. My maid was summoned away this afternoon, to her father who
is sick. [_Sinking on to the bench._] Still, these risks are
considerable enough.

QUEX.

And yet you deliberately court them!

DUCHESS.

Great passions involve great dangers. The history of the world shows
that.

QUEX.

But why now--now that circumstances are altered between us? why, on
earth, do you play these hazardous tricks now?

DUCHESS.

I was determined to meet, to know, the girl with whom you are about to
_ranger_ yourself, Harry.

QUEX.

Even that could have been arrived at in some safer way.

DUCHESS.

Ah, but you fail to see; it was the daring of this proceeding that
attracted me--the romance of it!

QUEX.

[_Raising his hands._] Romance! still!

DUCHESS.

Always. It is the very blood in my veins. It keeps me young. I shall die
a romantic girl, however old I may be.

QUEX.

You ought, you really ought, to have flourished in the Middle Ages.

DUCHESS.

You have frequently made that observation. [_Rising._] I do live in the
Middle Ages, in my imagination. I live in every age in which Love was
not a cool, level emotion, but a fierce, all-conquering