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LORD SUMMERHAYS. [shuddering] Stop, stop. Can no woman understand a man’s delicacy?

HYPATIA. [revelling in the recollection] And then–ha, ha!–you proposed. You! A father! For your son’s girl!

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Stop, I tell you. Dont profane what you dont understand.

HYPATIA. That was something happening at last with a vengeance. It was splendid. It was my first peep behind the scenes. If I’d been seventeen I should have fallen in love with you. Even as it is, I feel quite differently towards you from what I do towards other old men. So [offering her hand] you may kiss my hand if that will be any fun for you.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. [rising and recoiling to the table, deeply revolted] No, no, no. How dare you? [She laughs mischievously]. How callous youth is! How coarse! How cynical! How ruthlessly cruel!

HYPATIA. Stuff! It’s only that youre tired of a great many things Ive never tried.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. It’s not alone that. Ive not forgotten the brutality of my own boyhood. But do try to learn, glorious young beast that you are, that age is squeamish, sentimental, fastidious. If you cant understand my holier feelings, at least you know the bodily infirmities of the old. You know that I darent eat all the rich things you gobble up at every meal; that I cant bear the noise and racket and clatter that affect you no more than they affect a stone. Well, my soul is like that too. Spare it: be gentle with it [he involuntarily puts out his hands to plead: she takes them with a laugh]. If you could possibly think of me as half an angel and half an invalid, we should get on much better together.

HYPATIA. We get on very well, I think. Nobody else ever called me a glorious young beast. I like that. Glorious young beast expresses exactly what I like to be.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. [extricating his hands and sitting down] Where on earth did you get these morbid tastes? You seem to have been well brought up in a normal, healthy, respectable, middle-class family. Yet you go on like the most unwholesome product of the rankest Bohemianism.

HYPATIA. Thats just it. I’m fed up with–

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Horrible expression. Dont.

HYPATIA. Oh, I daresay it’s vulgar; but theres no other word for it. I’m fed up with nice things: with respectability, with propriety! When a woman has nothing to do, money and respectability mean that nothing is ever allowed to happen to her. I dont want to be good; and I dont want to be bad: I just dont want to be bothered about either good or bad: I want to be an active verb.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. An active verb? Oh, I see. An active verb signifies to be, to do, or to suffer.

HYPATIA. Just so: how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do; and I’m game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing but being good and nice and ladylike I simply wont. Stay down here with us for a week; and I’ll shew you what it means: shew it to you going on day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Shew me what?

HYPATIA. Girls withering into ladies. Ladies withering into old maids. Nursing old women. Running errands for old men. Good for nothing else at last. Oh, you cant imagine the fiendish selfishness of the old people and the maudlin sacrifice of the young. It’s more unbearable than any poverty: more horrible than any regular-right-down wickedness. Oh, home! home! parents! family! duty! how I loathe them! How I’d like to see them all blown to bits! The poor escape. The wicked escape. Well, I cant be poor: we’re rolling in money: it’s no use pretending we’re not. But I can be wicked; and I’m quite prepared to be.