ence would it make? Beauty is all
very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been
in the house three days? I thought our pictures very lovely when papa
bought them; but I haven't looked at them for years. You never bother
about my looks: you are too well used to me. I might be the umbrella
stand.

TANNER. You lie, you vampire: you lie.

ANN. Flatterer. Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you don't
want to marry me?

TANNER. The Life Force. I am in the grip of the Life Force.

ANN. I don't understand in the least: it sounds like the Life Guards.

TANNER. Why don't you marry Tavy? He is willing. Can you not be
satisfied unless your prey struggles?

ANN. [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will never
marry. Haven't you noticed that that sort of man never marries?

TANNER. What! a man who idolizes women who sees nothing in nature but
romantic scenery for love duets! Tavy, the chivalrous, the faithful, the
tenderhearted and true! Tavy never marry! Why, he was born to be swept
up by the first pair of blue eyes he meets in the street.

ANN. Yes, I know. All the same, Jack, men like that always live in
comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are adored
by their landladies, and never get married. Men like you always get
married.

TANNER. [Smiting his brow] How frightfully, horribly true! It has been
staring me in the face all my life; and I never saw it before.

ANN. Oh, it's the same with women. The poetic temperament's a very nice
temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I daresay; but it's
an old maid's temperament.

TANNER. Barren. The Life Force passes it by.

ANN. If that's what you mean by the Life Force, yes.

TANNER. You don't care for Tavy?

ANN. [looking round carefully to make sure that Tavy is not within
earshot] No.

TANNER. And you do care for me?

ANN. [rising quietly and shaking her finger at him] Now Jack! Behave
yourself.

TANNER. Infamous, abandoned woman! Devil!

ANN. Boa-constrictor! Elephant!

TANNER. Hypocrite!

ANN. [Softly] I must be, for my future husband's sake.

TANNER. For mine! [Correcting himself savagely] I mean for his.

ANN.[ignoring the correction] Yes, for yours. You had better marry what
you call a hypocrite, Jack. Women who are not hypocrites go about in
rational dress and are insulted and get into all sorts of hot water. And
then their husbands get dragged in too, and live in continual drea