fan; takes off his cape, and, as there is no room on the
table for it, takes it to the piano; puts his hat on the cape; crosses
to the hearth; looks at his watch; puts it up again; notices the things
on the table; lights up as if he saw heaven opening before him; goes to
the table and takes the cloud in both hands, nestling his nose into its
softness and kissing it; kisses the gloves one after another; kisses the
fan: gasps a long shuddering sigh of ecstasy; sits down on the stool and
presses his hands to his eyes to shut out reality and dream a little;
takes his hands down and shakes his head with a little smile of rebuke
for his folly; catches sight of a speck of dust on his shoes and hastily
and carefully brushes it off with his handkerchief; rises and takes
the hand mirror from the table to make sure of his tie with the gravest
anxiety; and is looking at his watch again when She comes in, much
flustered. As she is dressed for the theatre; has spoilt, petted ways;
and wears many diamonds, she has an air of being a young and beautiful
woman; but as a matter of hard fact, she is, dress and pretensions
apart, a very ordinary South Kensington female of about 37, hopelessly
inferior in physical and spiritual distinction to the beautiful youth,
who hastily puts down the mirror as she enters.

HE [kissing her hand] At last!

SHE. Henry: something dreadful has happened.

HE. What's the matter?

SHE. I have lost your poems.

HE. They were unworthy of you. I will write you some more.

SHE. No, thank you. Never any more poems for me. Oh, how could I have
been so mad! so rash! so imprudent!

HE. Thank Heaven for your madness, your rashness, your imprudence!

SHE [impatiently] Oh, be sensible, Henry. Can't you see what a terrible
thing this is for me? Suppose anybody finds these poems! what will they
think?

HE. They will think that a man once loved a woman more devotedly than
ever man loved woman before. But they will not know what man it was.

SHE. What good is that to me if everybody will know what woman it was?

HE. But how will they know?

SHE. How will they know! Why, my name is all over them: my silly,
unhappy name. Oh, if I had only been christened Mary Jane, or Gladys
Muriel, or Beatrice, or Francesca, or Guinevere, or something quite
common! But Aurora! Aurora! I'm the only Aurora in London; and everybody
knows it. I believe I'm the only Aurora in the world. And it's so
horribly easy to rhyme to it! Oh, He