MARG. What did I say? I can't account for your touchiness. GIL. Touchiness! You call me touchy? You! Who used to be seized with a violent fit of trembling every time some insignificant booby or some trumpery sheet happened to utter an unfavorable word of criticism. MARG. I don't remember one word of unfavorable criticism against me. GIL. H'm! I dare say you may be right. Critics are always chivalrous toward beautiful women. MARG. Chivalrous? Do you think my poems were praised out of chivalry? What about your own estimate-- GIL. Mine? I'm not going to retract so much as one little word. I simply want to remind you that you composed your sheaf of lovely poems while we were living together. MARG. And you actually consider yourself worthy of them? GIL. Would you have written them if it weren't for me? They are addressed to me. MARG. Never! GIL. What! Do you mean to deny that they are addressed to me? This is monstrous! MARG. No. They are not addressed to you. GIL. I am dumbfounded. I shall remind you of the situations in which some of your loveliest verses had birth? MARG. They were inscribed to an Ideal--[_Gilbert points to himself_]--whose representative on earth you happened to be. GIL. Ha! This is precious. Where did you get that? Do you know what the French would say in a case like that? "C'est de la littérature!" MARG. [_mimicking him_]. Ce n'est pas de la littérature! Now, that's the truth, the honest truth! Or do you really fancy that by the "slim boy" I meant you? Or that the curls I hymned belonged to you? At that time you were fat and your hair was never curly. [_Runs her fingers through his hair. Gilbert seizes the opportunity to capture her hand and kiss it._] What an idea! GIL. At that time you pictured it so; or, at all events, that is what you called it. To be sure, a poet is forced to take every sort of license for the sake of the rhythm. Didn't I once apostrophise you in a sonnet as "my canny lass"? In point of fact, you were neither--no, I don't want to be unfair--you were canny, shamefully canny, perversely canny. And it suited you perfectly. Well, I suppose I really oughtn't to wonder at you. You were at all times a snob. And, by Jove! you've attained your end. You have decoyed your blue-blooded boy with his well-manicured hands and his unmanicured brain, your matchless horseman, fencer, marksman, tennis player, heart-trifler--Marlitt could not have invented him more revolting than he actually is. Yes, what more can you wish? Whether he will satisfy you--who are acquainted with something nobler--is, of course, another question. I can only say that, in my view, you are degenerate in love. MARG. That must have struck you on the train. GIL. Not at all. It struck me this very moment. MARG. Make a note of it then; it's an apt phrase. GIL. I've another quite as apt. Formerly you were a woman; now you're a "sweet thing." Yes, that's it. What attracted you to a man of that type? Passion--frank and filthy passion--