GEORGE (shouting). But put these beastly things away.
OLIVIA (rising and gathering up the curtains). Very well, George. (She puts them away, slowly, gracefully. There is an uncomfortable silence. Evidently somebody ought to apologise.)
GEORGE (realising that he is the one). Er--look here, Olivia, old girl, you've been a jolly good wife to me, and we don't often have rows, and if I've been rude to you about this--lost my temper a bit perhaps, what?--I'll say I'm sorry. May I have a kiss?
OLIVIA (holding up her face). George, darling! (He kisses her.) Do you love me?
GEORGE (stiffly). I've said all I want to say about that. (He goes away from her.)
OLIVIA. Oh, but there must be lots you want to say--and perhaps don't like to. Do tell me, darling.
GEORGE. What it comes to is this. I consider that Dinah is too young to choose a husband for herself, and that Strange isn't the husband I should choose for her.
OLIVIA. You were calling him Brian yesterday.
GEORGE. Yesterday I regarded him as a boy, now he wants me to look upon him as a man.
GEORGE. And Dinah's nineteen. Ridiculous!
OLIVIA. If he'd been a Conservative, and thought that clouds were round, I suppose he'd have seemed older, somehow.
GEORGE. That's a different point altogether. That has nothing to do with his age.
OLIVIA (innocently). Oh, I thought it had.
GEORGE. What I am objecting to is these ridiculously early marriages before either party knows its own mind, much less the mind of the other party. Such marriages invariably lead to unhappiness.
OLIVIA. Of course, _my_ first marriage wasn't a happy one.
GEORGE. As you know, Olivia, I dislike speaking about your first marriage at all, and I had no intention of bringing it up now, but since you mention it--well, that is a case in point.
OLIVIA (looking back at it). When I was eighteen, I was in love. Or perhaps I only thought I was, and I don't know if I should have been happy or not if I had married him. But my father made me marry a man called Jacob Telworthy; and when things were too hot for him in England--"too hot for him"--I think that was the expression we used in those days--then we went to Australia, and I left him there, and the only happy moment I had in all my married life was on the morning when I saw in the papers that he was dead.