you know: the rosy fingered Aurora. They're all
about Aurora. When Mrs Bompas told me her name was Aurora, I couldn't
resist the temptation to lend them to her to read. But I didn't bargain
for your unsympathetic eyes.

HER HUSBAND [grinning] Apjohn: that's really very ready of you. You are
cut out for literature; and the day will come when Rory and I will be
proud to have you about the house. I have heard far thinner stories from
much older men.

HE [with an air of great surprise] Do you mean to imply that you don't
believe me?

HER HUSBAND. Do you expect me to believe you?

HE. Why not? I don't understand.

HER HUSBAND. Come! Don't underrate your own cleverness, Apjohn. I think
you understand pretty well.

HE. I assure you I am quite at a loss. Can you not be a little more
explicit?

HER HUSBAND. Don't overdo it, old chap. However, I will just be so far
explicit as to say that if you think these poems read as if they were
addressed, not to a live woman, but to a shivering cold time of day at
which you were never out of bed in your life, you hardly do justice to
your own literary powers--which I admire and appreciate, mind you, as
much as any man. Come! own up. You wrote those poems to my wife. [An
internal struggle prevents Henry from answering]. Of course you did.
[He throws the poems on the table; and goes to the hearthrug, where
he plants himself solidly, chuckling a little and waiting for the next
move].

HE [formally and carefully] Mr Bompas: I pledge you my word you are
mistaken. I need not tell you that Mrs Bompas is a lady of stainless
honor, who has never cast an unworthy thought on me. The fact that she
has shown you my poems--

HER HUSBAND. That's not a fact. I came by them without her knowledge.
She didn't show them to me.

HE. Does not that prove their perfect innocence? She would have shown
them to you at once if she had taken your quite unfounded view of them.

HER HUSBAND [shaken] Apjohn: play fair. Don't abuse your intellectual
gifts. Do you really mean that I am making a fool of myself?

HE [earnestly] Believe me, you are. I assure you, on my honor as a
gentleman, that I have never had the slightest feeling for Mrs Bompas
beyond the ordinary esteem and regard of a pleasant acquaintance.

HER HUSBAND [shortly, showing ill humor for the first time] Oh, indeed.
[He leaves his hearth and begins to approach Henry slowly, looking him
up and down with growing resentment].

HE [hastening t