DUMBY. [_With a sigh_.] Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It’s as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive. CECIL GRAHAM. You’ll play, of course, Tuppy? LORD AUGUSTUS. [_Pouring himself out a brandy and soda at table_.] Can’t, dear boy. Promised Mrs. Erlynne never to play or drink again. CECIL GRAHAM. Now, my dear Tuppy, don’t be led astray into the paths of virtue. Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good. LORD DARLINGTON. [_Rising from R. table_, _where he has been writing letters_.] They always do find us bad! DUMBY. I don’t think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy. LORD DARLINGTON. No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. [_Sits down at C. table_.] DUMBY. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars? Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington. CECIL GRAHAM. Too romantic! You must be in love. Who is the girl? LORD DARLINGTON. The woman I love is not free, or thinks she isn’t. [_Glances instinctively at_ LORD WINDERMERE _while he speaks_.] CECIL GRAHAM. A married woman, then! Well, there’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about. LORD DARLINGTON. Oh! she doesn’t love me. She is a good woman. She is the only good woman I have ever met in my life. CECIL GRAHAM. The only good woman you have ever met in your life? LORD DARLINGTON. Yes! CECIL GRAHAM. [_Lighting a cigarette_.] Well, you are a lucky fellow! Why, I have met hundreds of good women. I never seem to meet any but good women. The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a middle-class education. LORD DARLINGTON. This woman has purity and innocence. She has everything we men have lost. CECIL GRAHAM. My dear fellow, what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective. DUMBY. She doesn’t really love you then? LORD DARLINGTON. No, she does not! DUMBY. I congratulate you, my dear fellow. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy! But I am interested to hear she does not love you. How long could you love a woman who didn’t love you, Cecil? CECIL GRAHAM. A woman who didn’t love me? Oh, all my life! DUMBY. So could I. But it’s so difficult to meet one. LORD DARLINGTON. How can you be so conceited, DUMBY?