er hand]_ you may kiss my hand if that will be
any fun for you.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[rising and recoiling to the table, deeply
revolted]_ No, no, no. How dare you? _[She laughs mischievously]._
How callous youth is! How coarse! How cynical! How ruthlessly
cruel!

HYPATIA. Stuff! It's only that youre tired of a great many things
Ive never tried.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. It's not alone that. Ive not forgotten the
brutality of my own boyhood. But do try to learn, glorious young
beast that you are, that age is squeamish, sentimental, fastidious.
If you cant understand my holier feelings, at least you know the
bodily infirmities of the old. You know that I darent eat all the
rich things you gobble up at every meal; that I cant bear the noise
and racket and clatter that affect you no more than they affect a
stone. Well, my soul is like that too. Spare it: be gentle with it
_[he involuntarily puts out his hands to plead: she takes them with a
laugh]._ If you could possibly think of me as half an angel and half
an invalid, we should get on much better together.

HYPATIA. We get on very well, I think. Nobody else ever called me a
glorious young beast. I like that. Glorious young beast expresses
exactly what I like to be.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[extricating his hands and sitting down]_ Where on
earth did you get these morbid tastes? You seem to have been well
brought up in a normal, healthy, respectable, middle-class family.
Yet you go on like the most unwholesome product of the rankest
Bohemianism.

HYPATIA. Thats just it. I'm fed up with--

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Horrible expression. Dont.

HYPATIA. Oh, I daresay it's vulgar; but theres no other word for it.
I'm fed up with nice things: with respectability, with propriety!
When a woman has nothing to do, money and respectability mean that
nothing is ever allowed to happen to her. I dont want to be good; and
I dont want to be bad: I just dont want to be bothered about either
good or bad: I want to be an active verb.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. An active verb? Oh, I see. An active verb
signifies to be, to do, or to suffer.

HYPATIA. Just so: how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do;
and I'm game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing
but being good and nice and ladylike I simply wont. Stay down here
with us for a week; and I'll shew you what it means: shew it to you
going on day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetim