The New Woman Part 45

You are cruel.

MARGERY.

Are you looking for your wife?

SYLVESTER [_laughs_].

Agnes and I go very different ways.

MARGERY.

I think you're going the same way, both of you.

SYLVESTER [_still laughing_].

But in opposite directions. Mrs. Cazenove, you're quite a philosopher.

Why have you grown so serious all at once?

MARGERY.

I'm older than I was.

SYLVESTER.

Only a fortnight since you were all vivacity.

MARGERY.

One can live a long time in a fortnight.

SYLVESTER.

I hope these ladies haven't converted you.

MARGERY.

Yes; I am a new woman.

SYLVESTER [_laughs_].

Your husband has been reading you his book!

MARGERY.

A good deal of it.

SYLVESTER.

What is it all about? If I am not too curious.

MARGERY.

It's about love.

SYLVESTER.

I thought it was about marriage.

MARGERY.

Aren't they the same thing? He says they are, and I agree with him.

And then he says [_half to herself_] that, when the love is gone, so is the marriage--and I think he's right!

[_Loses herself in thought._

SYLVESTER [_gazes at her for some moments, then unable to restrain himself_].

Ah, Margery! if Heaven had given me such a wife as you----

MARGERY [_rises_].

Heaven didn't, and there's an end of it.

SYLVESTER [_rises_].

Forgive me! how can I help admiring you?

MARGERY.

Can't you admire me without telling me? It's well to make the best of what we have, instead of trying to make the worst of what we haven't.

SYLVESTER.

I must be silent!

MARGERY.

Or not talk in that way.

[_Moves away._

SYLVESTER [_following, in an outburst_].

Gerald doesn't love you [_movement of MARGERY_]--oh, you said that just now! you mayn't know that you said it, but you did! My wife doesn't love me--I don't love my wife--and yet I must say nothing.

MARGERY.

What's it to me that you don't love your wife?