oking for something
I have lost.

PURDIE (hope springing eternal). Anything important?

MABEL. I used to fancy it, Jack. It is my husband's love. You don't
happen to have picked it up, Joanna? If so and you don't set great
store by it I should like it back--the pieces, I mean.

(MR. PURDIE is about lo reply to this, when JOANNA rather wisely fills
the breach.)

JOANNA. Mabel, I--I will not be talked to in that way. To imply that
I--that your husband--oh, shame!

PURDIE (finely). I must say, Mabel, that I am a little disappointed in
you. I certainly understood that you had gone upstairs to put on your
boots.

MABEL. Poor old Jack. (She muses.) A woman like that!

JOANNA (changing her comment in the moment of utterance), I forgive
you Mabel, you will be sorry for this afterwards.

PURDIE (warningly, but still reluctant to think less well of his
wife). Not a word against Joanna, Mabel. If you knew how nobly she
has spoken of you.

JOANNA (imprudently). She does know. She has been listening.

(There is a moment's danger of the scene degenerating into something
mid-Victorian. Fortunately a chivalrous man is present to lift it to a
higher plane. JOHN PURDIE is one to whom subterfuge of any kind is
abhorrent; if he has not spoken out before it is because of his
reluctance to give MABEL pain. He speaks out now, and seldom
probably has he proved himself more worthy.)

PURDIE. This is a man's business. I must be open with you now, Mabel:
it is the manlier way. If you wish it I shall always be true to you
in word and deed; it is your right. But I cannot pretend that Joanna
is not the one woman in the world for me. If I had met her before
you--it's Kismet, I suppose. (He swells.)

JOANNA (from a chair). Too late, too late.

MABEL (although the woman has seen him swell). I suppose you never
knew what true love was till you met her, Jack?

PURDIE. You force me to say it. Joanna and I are as one person. We
have not a thought at variance. We are one rather than two.

MABEL (looking at JOANNA). Yes, and that's the one! (With the
cheapest sarcasm.) I am so sorry to have marred your lives.

PURDIE. If any blame there is, it is all mine; she is as spotless as
the driven snow. The moment I mentioned love to her she told me to
desist.

MABEL. Not she.

JOANNA. So you were listening! (The obtuseness of MABEL is very
strange to her.) Mabel, don't you see how splendid he is!

MABEL. Not quite, Joanna.

(She goes away