NINIAN: Turn your face around. ANN: No. NINIAN: Those days are over, my darling. [_NINIAN turns her face round and kisses and kisses her. When he is finished, they are both flushed; her hair is dishevelled and he is out of breath._ NINIAN: That’s what you needed, isn’t it? ANN: How dare you! How dare you! NINIAN: You prefer the imaginary Mr. Jordan? ANN: If you ever do that again, I shall kill you! NINIAN: What a little vixen you are! ANN: I mean it. NINIAN: My dear, seriously, you ask a little too much of life. For years you have been worshipped from afar by reverent friends as a saint and a statue. I joined them in my awe of the cold, good woman, beautiful and untouched. I respected my model wife. Then, one fine day, you tell us that you have a lover—you proclaim it with flaming passion. No one believes you. Of course it isn’t true. You are the saint. What you say is only the flaring loyalty of friendship. You are such a wonderful friend, with such a beautiful, unworldly sense of the relationship. ANN: Don’t! NINIAN: You all think I’m a fool, don’t you? I can’t talk. I’m not witty. I take myself seriously, and my duties seriously. Supposing some day you discover that I was not stupid as I seemed? ANN: I never thought you stupid. NINIAN: Because I don’t choose to play at eighteenth-century conversations with two ridiculous old men and one intolerable young girl, because I have nothing to say to your disreputable old aunt, you think I see nothing. I let them laugh at me because it is the only thing they _can_ do; but sometimes when I am alone, I laugh at them—I, who have no sense of humour; Ninian, your one great blunder. ANN: Please! NINIAN: Well, you’ve often had your little laughs against me. Now, for a change, you and I are going to be fellow conspirators. ANN (_frightened_): What do you mean? NINIAN: I’m a simple man; I don’t go in for psychology. I can’t talk. I don’t want to. It is a curtain between you and life. Your uncle, your aunt, Molyneux, Selina, they make patterns over everything, but it doesn’t change the underneath. ANN: They only pretend. NINIAN: They think they pretend, but they get caught themselves. They thought it would be amusing to have a saint in the family. You were the only possible candidate. In fact, I agree that you fitted admirably into the rôle. You are unselfish and conscientious and charitable. Only you upset their calculations by being a real person. ANN: They are all like that underneath. NINIAN: And you fell in love; that made you more human still. ANN: What do you mean? NINIAN: And one day, their artificial chatter became unbearable and you told them the truth. ANN: Do you mean that silly joke about Mr. Jordan? NINIAN: Precisely. But they were so well trained that they didn’t believe you. ANN: I don’t understand. NINIAN: You weren’t playing the game of love according to their rules. ANN (_terrified_): Ninian!