Only the unimaginative never change their views.
I should have gone on putting up with the existing conditions?
I ought never to have proposed it. Think what a loving wife must suffer under the circumstances--lying awake at night listening to the wind howling in the chimneys and sobbing in the trees. It doesn't bear thinking of.
Quite so--quite so! And about our dear old friends whom I was obliged to drop. You may remember you made some very strong comments on my weakness yesterday.
Wybrow, for instance--an awful good chap.
A tavern wit--a Johnsonian spirit--eminently out of place on the domestic hearth.
Foolishly married a woman your wife couldn't get on with. You admitted it.
But Burleigh--a truly great spirit--your own words.
Burleigh? It isn't because a man gives you a watch that you need thrust him down your wife's throat, is it?
Not at all. One sees things more clearly in the morning.
Well, since you've resigned your attitude of nonintervention, what do you advise?
Of course. Why impose conditions on a weak, loving, trusting woman? [_Going to him._] Damn it all, old man, show a little heart.
You know it means the sacrifice of my secretary?
[_A little embarrassed; he drops his cigarette and places his foot on it._] It's obvious that Miss Woodward can't stay on here in your wife's absence.
You heard what Evans said. The servants are talking already--and if the servants are talking this morning the neighbours will be talking this afternoon, and the entire north-west of London by the evening.
I suppose you don't wish to compromise the girl?
Certainly not--certainly not! [_He goes slowly over to GUNNING, and looks him in the face, smiling._] And so that's your secret.
All this solicitude for my happiness--this sudden change of your point of view--this miraculous conversion of the cynic into the peacemaker--all inspired by a pair of blue eyes. An arrow from Cupid's bow has winged its way into this wooden heart--[_Tapping GUNNING'S chest_]--and "Earth has won her child again," as Goethe puts it.
Don't be offended. I like it. It pleases me. Think of it! One dull evening in a suburban home, one morning's encounter in a rose-garden, and the thing's done--the sage melts into the man, the onlooker into the soldier. I tell you I like it. It's so natural, so human--so splendidly unlike you. Let me help. What can I do? She's coming here now with some letters for me to sign. "Were it ever so airy a tread, your heart would hear her and beat." Isn't it so? Shall I speak to her for you? Better still, shall I leave you alone together?