OSIER: We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of a master hand. ARDEN: An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a Stradivarius. DAME DRESDEN: Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden? What could have detained you? ARDEN: Ah, Dame. It may have been a warning that I am a discordant instrument. I do not readily vibrate. DAME DRESDEN: A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil society. You have lost what cannot be recovered. ARDEN: There are the notes. OSIER: Yes, the notes. SWITHIN: You can be satisfied with the dog’s feast at the table, Mr. Arden! OSIER: Ha! VIRGINIA: Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every variation of his tones. ARDEN: Astraea! LADY OLDLACE: She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man. OSIER: Yes, yes. I have the words [reads]: ‘Woman is to the front of man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization. I see,’ he says, ‘the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough winds.’ DAME DRESDEN: And of Astraea herself, what were the words? ‘Nature’s dedicated widow.’ SWITHIN: Vestal widow, was it not? VIRGINIA: Maiden widow, I think. DAME DRESDEN: We decide for ‘dedicated.’ WINIFRED: Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late husband, the renowned Professor Towers. VIRGINIA: But his look was at dear Astraea. ARDEN: At Astraea? Why? VIRGINIA: For her sanction doubtless. ARDEN: Ha! WINIFRED: He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the successor of Professor Towers. ARDEN: Successor! SWITHIN: Guardian was it not? OSIER: Tutor. I think he said. (The three gentlemen consult Osier’s notes uneasily.) DAME DRESDEN: Our professor must by this time have received in full Astraea’s congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be too late. You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden? ARDEN (going to her): The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings instantly, Dame. DAME DRESDEN: You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired, though we dare not hint at it in his presence. No reference, ladies, to the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our appreciation and he could hardly bear it. ARDEN: Nothing is more distasteful to the orator! VIRGINIA: As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human by the exultation of him. SWITHIN: He breathes in a rarified air. OSIER: I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties. I see that here and there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so that I missed the sequence--the precious part. Ladies, permit me to rank him with Plato as to the equality of women and men. WINIFRED: It is nobly said. OSIER: And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.