ARDEN: She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years. HOMEWARE: The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to measure her widowhood by years. His, from the altar to the tomb. As it might be read, a one day’s walk! ARDEN: Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a whimsical feminine delicacy? HOMEWARE: You have argued it with her? ARDEN: I have presumed. HOMEWARE: And still she refused her hand! ARDEN: She commended me to you, sir. She has a sound judgement of persons. HOMEWARE: I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy, on the ground of her being a humorous damsel. Your predecessors had also argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical feminine delicacy. Where is the difference between you? Evidently she cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many conversations with Astraea? ARDEN: I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them. HOMEWARE: You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in her twenty-second year; and you want more of her. ARDEN: As much as I want more wisdom. HOMEWARE: You would call her your Muse? ARDEN: So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that. HOMEWARE: You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden. She has prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware. ARDEN: She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation. HOMEWARE: No harder task could be set a young man in modern days. Oh, the humorous damsel. You sketch me the dimple at her mouth. ARDEN: Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can bear inspection. Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me a hearing. HOMEWARE: Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock is unholy. Further, it passes me to explain. The young lady lands us where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous intention. ARDEN: What can I do? HOMEWARE: Love and war have been compared. Both require strategy and tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign. ARDEN: I will take to heart what you say, sir. HOMEWARE: Take it to head. There must be occasional descent of lovers’ heads from the clouds. And Professor Spiral,--But here we have a belated breeze of skirts. (The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.) SCENE III HOMEWARE, ARDEN, LYRA LYRA: My own dear uncle Homeware! HOMEWARE: But where is Pluriel? LYRA: Where is a woman’s husband when she is away from him? HOMEWARE: In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning. But hurry up the avenue, or you will be late for Professor Spiral’s address. LYRA: I know it all without hearing. Their Spiral! Ah, Mr. Arden! You have not chosen badly. The greater my experience, the more do I value my uncle Homeware’s company.