't go to it again, Henry [tossing
the flower on the piano]. It is that play that has done all the
mischief. I'm very sorry I ever saw it: it ought to be stopped.

HE [amazed] Aurora!

SHE. Yes: I mean it.

HE. That divinest love poem! the poem that gave us courage to speak to
one another! that revealed to us what we really felt for one another!
That--

SHE. Just so. It put a lot of stuff into my head that I should never
have dreamt of for myself. I imagined myself just like Candida.

HE [catching her hands and looking earnestly at her] You were right. You
are like Candida.

SHE [snatching her hands away] Oh, stuff! And I thought you were just
like Eugene. [Looking critically at him] Now that I come to look at you,
you are rather like him, too. [She throws herself discontentedly into
the nearest seat, which happens to be the bench at the piano. He goes to
her].

HE [very earnestly] Aurora: if Candida had loved Eugene she would have
gone out into the night with him without a moment's hesitation.

SHE [with equal earnestness] Henry: do you know what's wanting in that
play?

HE. There is nothing wanting in it.

SHE. Yes there is. There's a Georgina wanting in it. If Georgina had
been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life
tragedy. Now I'll tell you something about it that I have never told you
before.

HE. What is that?

SHE. I took Teddy to it. I thought it would do him good; and so it would
if I could only have kept him awake. Georgina came too; and you should
have heard the way she went on about it. She said it was downright
immoral, and that she knew the sort of woman that encourages boys to sit
on the hearthrug and make love to her. She was just preparing Teddy's
mind to poison it about me.

HE. Let us be just to Georgina, dearest

SHE. Let her deserve it first. Just to Georgina, indeed!

HE. She really sees the world in that way. That is her punishment.

SHE. How can it be her punishment when she likes it? It'll be my
punishment when she brings that budget of poems to Teddy. I wish you'd
have some sense, and sympathize with my position a little.

HE. [going away from the piano and beginning to walk about rather
testily] My dear: I really don't care about Georgina or about Teddy. All
these squabbles belong to a plane on which I am, as you say, no use. I
have counted the cost; and I do not fear the consequences. After all,
what is there to fear? Where is the difficulty? Wh