CULVER.  You are.  And I’m a boy.  I say we are absurd.  We’re continually absurd.  We were absurd all last evening when we pretended before the others, with the most disastrous results, that nothing was the matter.  We were still more absurd when we went to our twin beds and argued savagely with each other from bed to bed until four o’clock this morning.  Do you know that I had exactly one hour and fifty-five minutes’ sleep? (Yawns.) Do you know that owing to extreme exhaustion my behaviour at my office to-day has practically lost the war?  But the most absurd thing of all was you trying to do the Roman matron business at dinner to-night.  Mind you, I adore you for being absurd, but—­

MRS. CULVER (very endearingly, putting her hand on his mouth).  Dearest, you needn’t continue.  I know you’re wiser and stronger than me in every way.  But I love that.  Most women wouldn’t; but I do. (Kisses him.) Oh!  I’m so glad you’ve at last seen the force of my arguments about the title.

CULVER (gently warning).  Now, now!  You’re behaving like a journalist.

MRS. CULVER.  Like a journalist?

CULVER.  Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

MRS. CULVER.  But you do see the force of my arguments!

CULVER.  Quite.  But I also see the force of mine, and, as an impartial judge, I’m bound to say that yours aren’t in it with mine.

MRS. CULVER.  Then you’ve refused the title after all?

CULVER (ingratiatingly).  No.  I told you I hadn’t.  But I’m going to.  I was just thinking over the terms of the fatal letter to Lord Woking when you came in.  Starkey is now waiting for me to dictate it.  You see it positively must be posted to-night.

MRS. CULVER (springing from his knee).  Arthur, you’re playing with me!

CULVER.  No doubt.  Like a mouse plays with a cat.

MRS. CULVER.  Surely it has occurred to you—­

CULVER (firmly, but very pleasantly).  Stop!  You had till four o’clock this morning to deliver all your arguments.  You aren’t going to begin again.  I understand you’ve stayed in bed all day.  Quite right!  But if you stayed in bed merely to think of fresh arguments while I’ve been slaving away at the office for my country, I say you’re taking an unfair advantage of me, and I won’t have it.

MRS. CULVER (with dignity).  No.  I haven’t any fresh arguments; and if
I had, I shouldn’t say what they were.

CULVER.  Oh!  Why?

MRS. CULVER.  Because I can see it’s useless to argue with a man like you.

CULVER.  Now that’s what I call better news from the Front.

MRS. CULVER.  I was only going to say this.  Surely it has occurred to you that on patriotic grounds alone you oughtn’t to refuse the title.  I quite agree that Honours have been degraded.  Quite!  The thing surely is to try and make them respectable again.  And how are they ever to be respectable if respectable men refuse them?