t.

GREGORY. Great Heaven! we're both mad. That's my wife's voice.

MRS. JUNO. Ridiculous! Oh! we're dreaming it all. We [the door opens;
and Sibthorpe Juno appears in the roseate glow of the corridor (which
happens to be papered in pink) with Mrs. Lunn, like Tannhauser in the
hill of Venus. He is a fussily energetic little man, who gives himself
an air of gallantry by greasing the points of his moustaches and
dressing very carefully. She is a tall, imposing, handsome, languid
woman, with flashing dark eyes and long lashes. They make for the
chesterfield, not noticing the two palpitating figures blotted against
the walls in the gloom on either side. The figures flit away
noiselessly through the window and disappear].

JUNO [officiously] Ah: here we are. [He leads the way to the sofa]. Sit
down: I'm sure you're tired. [She sits]. That's right. [He sits beside
her on her left]. Hullo! [he rises] this sofa's quite warm.

MRS. LUNN [bored] Is it? I don't notice it. I expect the sun's been on
it.

JUNO. I felt it quite distinctly: I'm more thinly clad than you. [He
sits down again, and proceeds, with a sigh of satisfaction]. What a
relief to get off the ship and have a private room! That's the worst of
a ship. You're under observation all the time.

MRS. LUNN. But why not?

JUNO. Well, of course there's no reason: at least I suppose not. But,
you know, part of the romance of a journey is that a man keeps
imagining that something might happen; and he can't do that if there
are a lot of people about and it simply can't happen.

MRS. LUNN. Mr. Juno: romance is all very well on board ship; but when
your foot touches the soil of England there's an end of it.

JUNO. No: believe me, that's a foreigner's mistake: we are the most
romantic people in the world, we English. Why, my very presence here is
a romance.

MRS. LUNN [faintly ironical] Indeed?

JUNO. Yes. You've guessed, of course, that I'm a married man.

MRS. LUNN. Oh, that's all right. I'm a married woman.

JUNO. Thank Heaven for that! To my English mind, passion is not real
passion without guilt. I am a red-blooded man, Mrs. Lunn: I can't help
it. The tragedy of my life is that I married, when quite young, a woman
whom I couldn't help being very fond of. I longed for a guilty
passion--for the real thing--the wicked thing; and yet I couldn't care
twopence for any other woman when my wife was about. Year after year
went by: I felt my youth slipping away without