Jack. It's a great thing to be strong and master of your strength. Elsie. Your splendid strength! Your swiftness and your grace. Jack. But it's a greater to be clever, and I'd give up all my strength if I could write a poem like the one your brother wrote in the _Blackton Evening Times_. Elsie (_contemptuously_). Leo! That weakling. Jack. He may be, but he's got a brain. Elsie. You're twenty times the cleverer. Jack. Then I'm good for something better than football. I'm up in football now as high as I can get. I used to dream of being called the finest player in the League. They've called me that these last two seasons and my dream's grown bigger. I'm honoured for my play. I'd like to gain some honour now for work. Elsie. You've just told me football _is_ work. Jack. I mean brain work. A footballer's a labouring man. And I want you, Elsie. I look to you to lead me to the higher path. Elsie (_dejectedly_). You think I can! Jack. I know you can. You've got a fancy now for football, but it's not your real self. You're a cultured woman. Elsie (_interrupting_). Culture doesn't count. Jack (_proceeding_). You've gone beyond the things that puzzle me. You're at the other side. Why, Elsie, there are things in Browning that I can't make out, and Walter Pater has me beat to atoms. Elsie. Those aren't the real things, Jack. Jack. They're real enough to be the things that made me want you. I could pick and choose from lots of women fit to talk of football to me, but I'm tired of football. You're the only woman who can talk to me of other things--and you won't. Elsie. You're tired of football! Jack. Not of the game. Sick of the eternal jaw about it. Elsie. Well, I'm sick of books. Jack. You can't be that. Books last. Elsie. Your fame will last. Books aren't the real thing. Jack. Then what is real? Elsie. Blood. Flesh and blood. I'd burn every book in this room for the glory of another rush like yours when you scored your second goal last Saturday. It may have lasted thirty seconds, but it was worth a wilderness of books. Jack. It was worth just half a column in the _Athletic News_. Elsie. It's worth my love for you. It's not your brain I'm wanting, Jack. It's you. You're splendid as you are. Don't try to hide behind a dreary cloud of culture. It's better fun to be alive all over than to crawl through life with a half-dead body and a half-baked mind. Jack. Life's not all fun. Elsie. It isn't, but it ought to be, and for you and me it's going to be, and if you don't stop looking serious, I'll upset you by kissing you again. Jack. Don't do that, Elsie. It isn't right yet. Elsie. Jack, you've a bilious conscience. It's the only part of you that isn't gloriously fit. Jack. Give me till I've seen your father and then perhaps you'll tire of being kissed a long while sooner than I tire of kissing you. Elsie It's so stupid to ask father about a thing like that. It's not his lips you're going to kiss. It's mine.