ever having had a
romance in my life; for marriage is all very well; but it isn't
romance. There's nothing wrong in it, you see.

MRS. LUNN. Poor man! How you must have suffered!

JUNO. No: that was what was so tame about it. I wanted to suffer. You
get so sick of being happily married. It's always the happy marriages
that break up. At last my wife and I agreed that we ought to take a
holiday.

MRS. LUNN. Hadn't you holidays every year?

JUNO. Oh, the seaside and so on! That's not what we meant. We meant a
holiday from one another.

MRS. LUNN. How very odd!

JUNO. She said it was an excellent idea; that domestic felicity was
making us perfectly idiotic; that she wanted a holiday, too. So we
agreed to go round the world in opposite directions. I started for Suez
on the day she sailed for New York.

MRS. LUNN [suddenly becoming attentive] That's precisely what Gregory
and I did. Now I wonder did he want a holiday from me! What he said was
that he wanted the delight of meeting me after a long absence.

JUNO. Could anything be more romantic than that? Would anyone else than
an Englishman have thought of it? I daresay my temperament seems tame
to your boiling southern blood--

MRS. LUNN. My what!

JUNO. Your southern blood. Don't you remember how you told me, that
night in the saloon when I sang "Farewell and adieu to you dear Spanish
ladies," that you were by birth a lady of Spain? Your splendid
Andalusian beauty speaks for itself.

MRS. LUNN. Stuff! I was born in Gibraltar. My father was Captain
Jenkins. In the artillery.

JUNO [ardently] It is climate and not race that determines the
temperament. The fiery sun of Spain blazed on your cradle; and it
rocked to the roar of British cannon.

MRS. LUNN. What eloquence! It reminds me of my husband when he was in
love before we were married. Are you in love?

JUNO. Yes; and with the same woman.

MRS. LUNN. Well, of course, I didn't suppose you were in love with two
women.

JUNO. I don't think you quite understand. I meant that I am in love
with you.

MRS. LUNN [relapsing into deepest boredom] Oh, that! Men do fall in
love with me. They all seem to think me a creature with volcanic
passions: I'm sure I don't know why; for all the volcanic women I know
are plain little creatures with sandy hair. I don't consider human
volcanoes respectable. And I'm so tired of the subject! Our house is
always full of women who are in love with my husband and men who are in