MARCHBANKS (hopelessly). Nothing that's worth saying IS proper. (He rises, and wanders about the room in his lost way, saying) I can't understand you, Miss Garnett. What am I to talk about? PROSERPINE (snubbing him). Talk about indifferent things, talk about the weather. MARCHBANKS. Would you stand and talk about indifferent things if a child were by, crying bitterly with hunger? PROSERPINE. I suppose not. MARCHBANKS. Well: I can't talk about indifferent things with my heart crying out bitterly in ITS hunger. PROSERPINE. Then hold your tongue. MARCHBANKS. Yes: that is what it always comes to. We hold our tongues. Does that stop the cry of your heart?--for it does cry: doesn't it? It must, if you have a heart. PROSERPINE (suddenly rising with her hand pressed on her heart). Oh, it's no use trying to work while you talk like that. (She leaves her little table and sits on the sofa. Her feelings are evidently strongly worked on.) It's no business of yours, whether my heart cries or not; but I have a mind to tell you, for all that. MARCHBANKS. You needn't. I know already that it must. PROSERPINE. But mind: if you ever say I said so, I'll deny it. MARCHBANKS (compassionately). Yes, I know. And so you haven't the courage to tell him? PROSERPINE (bouncing up). HIM! Who? MARCHBANKS. Whoever he is. The man you love. It might be anybody. The curate, Mr. Mill, perhaps. PROSERPINE (with disdain). Mr. Mill!!! A fine man to break my heart about, indeed! I'd rather have you than Mr. Mill. MARCHBANKS (recoiling). No, really--I'm very sorry; but you mustn't think of that. I-- PROSERPINE. (testily, crossing to the fire and standing at it with her back to him). Oh, don't be frightened: it's not you. It's not any one particular person. MARCHBANKS. I know. You feel that you could love anybody that offered-- PROSERPINE (exasperated). Anybody that offered! No, I do not. What do you take me for? MARCHBANKS (discouraged). No use. You won't make me REAL answers--only those things that everybody says. (He strays to the sofa and sits down disconsolately.) PROSERPINE (nettled at what she takes to be a disparagement of her manners by an aristocrat). Oh, well, if you want original conversation, you'd better go and talk to yourself. MARCHBANKS. That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes. PROSERPINE. Wait until Mr. Morell comes. HE'LL talk to you. (Marchbanks shudders.) Oh, you needn't make wry faces over him: he can talk better than you. (With temper.) He'd talk your little head off. (She is going back angrily to her place, when, suddenly enlightened, he springs up and stops her.) MARCHBANKS. Ah, I understand now! PROSERPINE (reddening). What do you understand? MARCHBANKS. Your secret. Tell me: is it really and truly possible for a woman to love him? PROSERPINE (as if this were beyond all bounds). Well!!