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O, all right. Then I don’t know what she meant.
Archie! You don’t really think she’d come here? You don’t really think it, do you?
Well, it’s the sort of thing that that sort of girl might do, but of course I can’t say . . .
Good Lord, Archie! That would be awful.
But why?
Why? But what would I do? Where would she go? Where would her chaperon go? The chaperon would be some elderly lady. Why, it would kill her.
Well, if it did you’ve never met her, so you needn’t go into mourning for an elderly lady that you don’t know; not yet, anyway.
No, of course not. You’re laughing at me, Archie. But for the moment I took you seriously. Of course, she won’t come. One can go into a thing closely without doing it absolutely literally. But, good Lord, wouldn’t it be an awful situation if she did.
O, I don’t know.
All alone with me here? No, impossible. And the country isn’t civilised.
Archie Beal.
Women aren’t civilised.
Women aren’t . . .? Good Lord, Archie, what an awful remark. What do you mean?
We’re tame, they’re wild. We like all the dull things and the quiet things, they like all the romantic things and the dangerous things.
Why, Archie, it’s just the other way about.
O, yes; we do all the romantic things, and all the dangerous things. But why?
Why? Because we like them, I suppose.
I can’t think of any other reason.
I hate danger. Don’t you?
Er—well, yes, I suppose I do, really.
Of course you do. We all do. It’s the women that put us up to it. She’s putting you up to this. And the more she puts you up to the more likely is Hussein to get it in his fat neck.
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