ELLIE. Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is horrible. But don't you think it must have been a wonderful experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home, to meet a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts of brave things and having terrible adventures, and yet finding something in her that made him love to sit and talk with her and tell her about them? MRS HUSHABYE. That's your idea of romance, is it? ELLIE. Not romance, exactly. It might really happen. Ellie's eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. Mrs Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to the sofa and resumes her seat beside her. MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those stories that Othello told Desdemona couldn't have happened--? ELLIE. Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened. MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Desdemona thought they could have happened. But they didn't. ELLIE. Why do you look so enigmatic about it? You are such a sphinx: I never know what you mean. MRS HUSHABYE. Desdemona would have found him out if she had lived, you know. I wonder was that why he strangled her! ELLIE. Othello was not telling lies. MRS HUSHABYE. How do you know? ELLIE. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white, and very handsome, and-- MRS HUSHABYE. Ah! Now we're coming to it. Tell me all about him. I knew there must be somebody, or you'd never have been so miserable about Mangan: you'd have thought it quite a lark to marry him. ELLIE [blushing vividly]. Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don't want to make a secret of it, though of course I don't tell everybody. Besides, I don't know him. MRS HUSHABYE. Don't know him! What does that mean? ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to. MRS HUSHABYE. But you want to know him ever so much more intimately, eh? ELLIE. No, no: I know him quite--almost intimately. MRS HUSHABYE. You don't know him; and you know him almost intimately. How lucid! ELLIE. I mean that he does not call on us. I--I got into conversation with him by chance at a concert. MRS HUSHABYE. You seem to have rather a gay time at your concerts, Ellie. ELLIE. Not at all: we talk to everyone in the greenroom waiting for our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so splendid. But he was only one of the committee. I happened to tell him that I was copying a picture at the National Gallery. I make a little money that way. I can't paint much; but as it's always the same picture I can do it pretty quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It happened that he came to the National Gallery one day. MRS HUSHABYE. One students' day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and found the floor clear! Quite by accident?