PHILIP (_violently_): I don’t understand you, any of you—your uncle or your aunt or Selina. ANN (_interrupting_): Selina is just very young and uncompromising—a ruthless, fastidious realist. At least she thinks she is a realist, because she can face things, but it is so easy to face things before one has ever been hurt. PHILIP: Then there is you. ANN (_laughing_): There is me. (_Tenderly_): Are you glad? PHILIP (_who is walking up and down_): You are the most mysterious of them all. ANN: I am simplicity itself. It is only because you love me that you think me mysterious. The person you love is always mysterious because you have encircled them in the great mystery of love. PHILIP (_who is taking no notice of what she is saying_): They all think you a saint, and they are right, I suppose. You see no evil, in anyone, not even in yourself. ANN: Philip, how can you say a thing like that? No one knows better than I do that I am riddled with faults. PHILIP: You are practically faultless, and yet it would seem as if virtue meant nothing to you. ANN: What do you mean by virtue? PHILIP: What other people mean by it. ANN: That one’s body matters more than anything else? PHILIP: I shouldn’t have put it like that. ANN: Nor would the other people. PHILIP: You think nothing of having a lover. ANN: I think everything of it. PHILIP: You don’t mind deceiving your husband. ANN: You know I would have told him long ago if you had let me. PHILIP (_in despair at her blindness_): Good God! ANN: Don’t you remember we thought that although he doesn’t love me it would hurt him? PHILIP (_sneering_): Ninian too is like _other_ people. ANN: Yes—once one has given one’s heart all other gifts are so small. That is where it seems to me that the moralists go wrong—they seem to think the body so much more important than the heart or the soul. PHILIP: Moralists aren’t occupied with the heart or the soul. They are interested in the structure of society. ANN: Then why don’t they become county councillors or politicians? PHILIP: Because they would find difficulty in getting elected. ANN: You look tired. PHILIP: I am tired. ANN: What has tired you? The things you have done or the things you haven’t done? PHILIP: Both. ANN: Tell me! PHILIP (_sharply_): What? ANN: Everything—anything. PHILIP: There is nothing to tell. ANN (_teasing_): You look like a man with a guilty secret. PHILIP (_startled_): What are you driving at? ANN (_still gay_): How should I know? PHILIP: Well, I must be going. ANN: Already? PHILIP: Your guests will be arriving in a moment. ANN: Philip, please say something nice to me before you go. PHILIP: What do you mean by a nice thing? ANN: Something obvious and all-embracing. PHILIP: So you’ve reached the obvious, have you? ANN: I have always believed in the obvious. PHILIP: What would you call an obvious and all-embracing thing to say? ANN: I love you.