GREGORY. One never does quite want to stave it off. Danger is
delicious. But death isn't. We court the danger; but the real delight
is in escaping, after all.

MRS. JUNO. I don't think we'll talk about it any more. Danger is all
very well when you do escape; but sometimes one doesn't. I tell you
frankly I don't feel as safe as you do--if you really do.

GREGORY. But surely you can do as you please without injuring anyone,
Mrs. Juno. That is the whole secret of your extraordinary charm for me.

MRS. JUNO. I don't understand.

GREGORY. Well, I hardly know how to begin to explain. But the root of
the matter is that I am what people call a good man.

MRS. JUNO. I thought so until you began making love to me.

GREGORY. But you knew I loved you all along.

MRS. JUNO. Yes, of course; but I depended on you not to tell me so;
because I thought you were good. Your blurting it out spoilt it. And it
was wicked besides.

GREGORY. Not at all. You see, it's a great many years since I've been
able to allow myself to fall in love. I know lots of charming women;
but the worst of it is, they're all married. Women don't become
charming, to my taste, until they're fully developed; and by that time,
if they're really nice, they're snapped up and married. And then,
because I am a good man, I have to place a limit to my regard for them.
I may be fortunate enough to gain friendship and even very warm
affection from them; but my loyalty to their husbands and their hearths
and their happiness obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of
course I value such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am
surrounded with women who are most dear to me. But every one of them
has a post sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In every
lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every fair hillside,
we meet that confounded board; and there is always a gamekeeper round
the corner. But what is that to the horror of meeting it on every
beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a husband round the corner?
I have had this accursed board standing between me and every dear and
desirable woman until I thought I had lost the power of letting myself
fall really and wholeheartedly in love.

MRS. JUNO. Wasn't there a widow?

GREGORY. No. Widows are extraordinarily scarce in modern society.
Husbands live longer than they used to; and even when they do die,
their