nd you for ever.

OCTAVIUS. I wish I could believe that, vilely as you put it.

TANNER. Why, man, what other work has she in life but to get a husband?
It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a
man's to keep unmarried as long as he can. You have your poems and your
tragedies to work at: Ann has nothing.

OCTAVIUS. I cannot write without inspiration. And nobody can give me
that except Ann.

TANNER. Well, hadn't you better get it from her at a safe distance?
Petrarch didn't see half as much of Laura, nor Dante of Beatrice, as you
see of Ann now; and yet they wrote first-rate poetry--at least so
I'm told. They never exposed their idolatry to the test of domestic
familiarity; and it lasted them to their graves. Marry Ann and at
the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration than in a plate of
muffins.

OCTAVIUS. You think I shall tire of her.

TANNER. Not at all: you don't get tired of muffins. But you don't find
inspiration in them; and you won't in her when she ceases to be a poet's
dream and becomes a solid eleven stone wife. You'll be forced to dream
about somebody else; and then there will be a row.

OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is no use, Jack. You don't understand. You
have never been in love.

TANNER. I! I have never been out of it. Why, I am in love even with Ann.
But I am neither the slave of love nor its dupe. Go to the bee, thou
poet: consider her ways and be wise. By Heaven, Tavy, if women could do
without our work, and we ate their children's bread instead of making
it, they would kill us as the spider kills her mate or as the bees kill
the drone. And they would be right if we were good for nothing but love.

OCTAVIUS. Ah, if we were only good enough for Love! There is nothing
like Love: there is nothing else but Love: without it the world would be
a dream of sordid horror.

TANNER. And this--this is the man who asks me to give him the hand of my
ward! Tavy: I believe we were changed in our cradles, and that you are
the real descendant of Don Juan.

OCTAVIUS. I beg you not to say anything like that to Ann.

TANNER. Don't be afraid. She has marked you for her own; and nothing
will stop her now. You are doomed. [Straker comes back with a
newspaper]. Here comes the New Man, demoralizing himself with a
halfpenny paper as usual.

STRAKER. Now, would you believe it: Mr Robinson, when we're out motoring
we take in two papers, the Times for him, the Leader or the Echo for me.