Oh, you _are_ disagreeable!

GERALD [_putting MS. aside_].

Don't let us talk philosophy to-day. I want to talk to you about something else.

MRS. SYLVESTER [_cheerfully_].

Yes!

GERALD.

I have something to tell you.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

Interesting?

[_Smiling._

GERALD.

I'm in love.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

Oh!

[_From this point her manner changes._

GERALD.

Yes, in love, Mrs. Sylvester--in real love.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

What do you call real love?

GERALD.

Something quite different from what we had supposed. We've been on the wrong tack altogether. We have imagined something we have labelled love; we have put it into a crucible, and reduced it to its elements.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

And we have found those elements to be, community of interest and sympathy of soul.

GERALD.

But unfortunately for our theory, the thing we put into the crucible wasn't love at all.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

How do you know?

GERALD.

I didn't, till last week.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

It was at Mapledurham you made this discovery?

GERALD.

At Mapledurham.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

And your friend?

GERALD.

She was the revelation.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

I thought it was a woman.

GERALD.

That word just describes her. She is a woman--nothing more or less.

Away went all my theories into air. My precious wisdom was stripped bare before me, and in its nakedness I saw my folly. Not with laborious thought; but in one vivid flash I learned more than I ever learned at Oxford.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

Really?

GERALD.

A woman! that is what one wants--that's all. Birth, brains, accomplishments--pshaw! vanities! community of interest--sympathy of soul? mere dialectics! That's not love.

MRS. SYLVESTER.

What _is_, then?

GERALD.

It defies a.n.a.lysis. You can't put love into a crucible. You only know that there is something empty in you; and you don't know what fills it; but that's love. There's no mistake about the real thing.