LORD WILLIAM: Your little story is not good, etc. NINIAN: I seem to recollect that the division took place at two in the morning. MRS. MARTINEAU: Tut, tut, Ann, the early hours of the morning! Devoted to friendship! ANN: Yes. I don’t know at what time they wanted him to speak, but he was with me. He is my lover. LADY EMILY: Ann, dearest, you’re mad. LORD WILLIAM: Ann, you’re joking. NINIAN: Do you think you are going to make us believe a yarn like that? MRS. MARTINEAU: Tim’s Madonna Jordan’s mistress? ANN: It’s true. [_She is almost in tears._ NINIAN: Really, Ann, it’s bad enough to have friends like that, but this hysterical self-sacrifice business is preposterous. MOLYNEUX: My dear child, you should remember that Mrs. Martineau always believes the worst on principle. ANN: But I can prove to her that it’s true, that he wasn’t drunk or—with someone like that. NINIAN: Don’t be absurd. By the worst, Molyneux means your assertion that Jordan was your lover. If that story got about, someone who didn’t know you might believe it. ANN (_quite calmly_): It’s true. LORD WILLIAM: It is delightful to know anyone as innocent as you are, Ann. To sit there deliberately and tell us a fifth-rate politician is your lover! Even we did not think you as ignorant of the usages of _La Vie Galante_. ANN: Don’t you see it is not a question of _la vie galante_? It is a question of love. NINIAN: How dare you talk about love? You damned cold—— LADY EMILY: Ninian! NINIAN: I beg your pardon. MOLYNEUX: Dear little Ann, thinking that women with lovers use their liaisons as alibis for politicians. SELINA: Ann, how do you keep so innocent? MRS. MARTINEAU: Tell us your secret! ANN: It is a secret you none of you know. [_She bursts into tears._ NINIAN: Wives should have no secrets from their husbands. [_He strikes a match._ CURTAIN ACT III ACT III (SAME AS ACT I) [_TIM, SELINA and LORD WILLIAM._ LORD WILLIAM: Tim! Who was it? TIM: It was Mrs. Martineau who spread the story. SELINA: Viper. TIM: I should like to gag her with thistles. SELINA: Have you seen her? TIM: I met her in the street. LORD WILLIAM: I trust you did not cut her. It is better to hear what people have to say first, then you can cut them afterwards with all the more reason. TIM: I am afraid I told her what I thought about her. LORD WILLIAM: What did she say? TIM: She said that of course she did not believe Ann’s story, but that it was so interesting that Ann should have cared enough for Jordan to invent it. SELINA: Brute! TIM: Afterwards, when she was really angry, she remarked that she had been sure that we would all like to feel that the world had been able to benefit by this wonderful story of Ann’s unworldliness and high sense of friendship, as these qualities are so rarely seen and still more rarely believed in. SELINA: I can hear her saying it. LORD WILLIAM: Have you seen Ann?