ing else! At least that is the only way I can account for
the terribly haggard look of most of your pretty women in London!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. What an appalling philosophy that sounds! To
attempt to classify you, Mrs. Cheveley, would be an impertinence. But
may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to
be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.

MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and
Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them
merely poses.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. You prefer to be natural?

MRS. CHEVELEY. Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep
up.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. What would those modern psychological novelists, of
whom we hear so much, say to such a theory as that?

MRS. CHEVELEY. Ah! the strength of women comes from the fact that
psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women . . . merely
adored.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. You think science cannot grapple with the problem
of women?

MRS. CHEVELEY. Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is
why it has no future before it, in this world.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And women represent the irrational.

MRS. CHEVELEY. Well-dressed women do.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [_With a polite bow_.] I fear I could hardly agree
with you there. But do sit down. And now tell me, what makes you leave
your brilliant Vienna for our gloomy London--or perhaps the question is
indiscreet?

MRS. CHEVELEY. Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Well, at any rate, may I know if it is politics or
pleasure?

MRS. CHEVELEY. Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is
not fashionable to flirt till one is forty, or to be romantic till one is
forty-five, so we poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have
nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems
to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their
fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more . . .
becoming!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. A political life is a noble career!

MRS. CHEVELEY. Sometimes. And sometimes it is a clever game, Sir
Robert. And sometimes it is a great nuisance.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Which do you find it?

MRS. CHEVELEY. I? A combination of all three. [_Drops her fan_.]

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [_Picks up fan_.] Allow me!

MRS. CHEVELEY