St. Olpherts.  Ah!  Oh, these modern nurses, in their greys, or browns, and snowy bibs!  They have much to answer for, dear Lucas.

Lucas.  No, no!  Why will you persist, all of you, in regarding this as a mere morbid infatuation, bred in the fumes of pastilles?  It isn’t so!  Laugh, if you care to; but this is a meeting of affinities, of the solitary man and the truly sympathetic woman.

St. Olpherts.  And oh—­oh these sympathetic women!

Lucas.  No!  Oh, the unsympathetic women!  There you have the cause of half the world’s misery.  The unsympathetic women—­you should have loved one of them.

St. Olpherts.  I dare say I’ve done that in my time.

Lucas.  Love one of these women—­I know!—­worship here, yield yourself to the intoxicating day-dreams that make the grimy world sweeter than any heaven ever imagined.  How you heart leaps with gratitude for your good fortune!  How compassionately you regard your unblest fellow men!  What may you not accomplish with such a mate beside you; how high will be your aims, how paltry every obstacle that bars your way to them; how sweet is to be the labour, how divine the rest!  Then—­you marry her.  Marry her, and in six months, if you’ve pluck enough to do it, lag behind your shooting party and blow your brains out, by accident, at the edge of a turnip-field.  You have found out by that time all that there is to look for—­the daily diminishing interest in your doings, the poorly assumed attention as you attempt to talk over some plan for the future; then the yawn, and by degrees, the covert sneer, the little sarcasm, and finally, the frank, open stare of boredom.  Ah, Duke, when you all carry out your repressive legislation against women of evil lives, don’t fail to include in your schedule the Unsympathetic Wives.  They are the women whose victims show the sorriest scars; they are the really “bad women” of the world:  all the others are snow-white in comparison!

St. Olpherts.  Yes, you’ve got a good deal of this in that capital Essay you quoted from this morning.  Dear fellow, I admit your home discomforts; but to jump out of the frying pan into this confounded—­ what does she call it?—­compact!

Lucas.  Compact?

St. Olpherts.  A vague reference, as I understand, to your joint crusade against the blessed institution of Marriage.

Lucas. [An alteration in his manner.] Oh—­ho, that idea!  What—­what has she been saying to you?

St. Olpherts.  Incidentally she pitched into me, dear Lucas; she attacked my moral character.  You must have been telling tales.

Lucas.  Oh, I—­I hope not.  Of course, we—­

St. Olpherts.  Yes, yes—­a little family gossip, to pass the time while she has been dressing her hair or—­By the bye, she doesn’t appear to spend much time in dressing her hair.