onceive that my notes will be precious.
WINIFRED: You could take notes!
LADY OLDLACE: It seems a device for missing the quintessential.
SWITHIN: Scraps of the body to the loss of the soul of it. We can allow
that our friend performed good menial service.
WINIFRED: I could not have done the thing.
SWITHIN: In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.
LADY OLDLACE: One hardly felt one breathed.
VIRGINIA: I confess it moved me to tears.
SWITHIN: There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection. Such
subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.
WINIFRED: Surely there were passages of a distinct and most exquisite
pathos.
LADY OLDLACE: As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos.
VIRGINIA: In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by
the pathos. All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos. My tears
were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.
SWITHIN: I must make confession. He played on me too.
OSIER: We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of
a master hand.
ARDEN: An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a
Stradivarius.
DAME DRESDEN: Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden? What could have
detained you?
ARDEN: Ah, Dame. It may have been a warning that I am a discordant
instrument. I do not readily vibrate.
DAME DRESDEN: A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil
society. You have lost what cannot be recovered.
ARDEN: There are the notes.
OSIER: Yes, the notes.
SWITHIN: You can be satisfied with the dog's feast at the table, Mr.
Arden!
OSIER: Ha!
VIRGINIA: Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than with
her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every variation
of his tones.
ARDEN: Astraea!
LADY OLDLACE: She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from
her ideal to the gross reality of man.
OSIER: Yes, yes. I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of man,
holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization. I see,' he says, 'the
little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough
winds.'
DAME DRESDEN: And of Astraea herself, what were the words? 'Nature's
dedicated widow.'
SWITHIN: Vestal widow, was it not?
VIRGINIA: Maiden widow, I think.
DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'
WINIFRED: Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late
husband, the re
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