n.

NORA. I don't think you know the sort of man you are at all.
Whatever may be the matter with you, it's not want of feeling.

BROADBENT [hurt and petulant]. It's you who have no feeling.
You're as heartless as Larry.

NORA. What do you expect me to do? Is it to throw meself at your
head the minute the word is out o your mouth?

BROADBENT [striking his silly head with his fists]. Oh, what a
fool! what a brute I am! It's only your Irish delicacy: of
course, of course. You mean Yes. Eh? What? Yes, yes, yes?

NORA. I think you might understand that though I might choose to
be an old maid, I could never marry anybody but you now.

BROADBENT [clasping her violently to his breast, with a crow of
immense relief and triumph]. Ah, that's right, that's right:
That's magnificent. I knew you would see what a first-rate thing
this will be for both of us.

NORA [incommoded and not at all enraptured by his ardor]. You're
dreadfully strong, an a gradle too free with your strength. An I
never thought o whether it'd be a good thing for us or not. But
when you found me here that time, I let you be kind to me, and
cried in your arms, because I was too wretched to think of
anything but the comfort of it. An how could I let any other man
touch me after that?

BROADBENT [touched]. Now that's very nice of you, Nora, that's
really most delicately womanly [he kisses her hand chivalrously].

NORA [looking earnestly and a little doubtfully at him]. Surely
if you let one woman cry on you like that you'd never let another
touch you.

BROADBENT [conscientiously]. One should not. One OUGHT not, my
dear girl. But the honest truth is, if a chap is at all a
pleasant sort of chap, his chest becomes a fortification that has
to stand many assaults: at least it is so in England.

NORA [curtly, much disgusted]. Then you'd better marry an
Englishwoman.

BROADBENT [making a wry face]. No, no: the Englishwoman is too
prosaic for my taste, too material, too much of the animated
beefsteak about her. The ideal is what I like. Now Larry's taste
is just the opposite: he likes em solid and bouncing and rather
keen about him. It's a very convenient difference; for we've
never been in love with the same woman.

NORA. An d'ye mean to tell me to me face that you've ever been in
love before?

BROADBENT. Lord! yes.

NORA. I'm not your first love?

BROADBENT. First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of
curiosity: no really self-respecting w