CULVER.  This looks to me suspiciously like an argument.

MRS. CULVER.  Not at all.  It’s simply a question.

CULVER.  Well, the answer is, I don’t want Honours to be respectable any more.  Proverb:  When fish has gone bad ten thousand decent men can’t take away the stink.

MRS. CULVER.  Now you’re insulting your country.  I know you often pretend your country’s the slackest place on earth, but it’s only pretence.  You don’t really think so.  The truth is that inside you you’re positively conceited about your country.  You think it’s the greatest country that ever was.  And so it is.  And yet when your country offers you this honour you talk about bad fish.  I say it’s an insult to Great Britain.

CULVER.  Great Britain hasn’t offered me any title.  The fact is that there are a couple of shrewd fellows up a devil of a tree in Whitehall, and they’re waving a title at me in the hope that I shall come and stand under the tree so that they can get down by putting their dirty boots on my shoulders.  Well, I’m not going to be a ladder.

MRS. CULVER.  I wish you wouldn’t try to be funny.

CULVER.  I’m not trying to be funny.  I am being funny.

MRS. CULVER.  You might be serious for once.

CULVER.  I am serious.  Beneath this amusing and delightful exterior, there is hidden the most serious, determined, resolute, relentless, inexorable, immovable man that ever breathed.  And let me tell you something else, my girl—­something I haven’t mentioned before because of my nice feelings.  What has this title affair got to do with you?  What the dickens has it got to do with you?  The title isn’t offered as a reward for your work; it’s offered as a reward for my work. You aren’t the Controller of Accounts, I happen to be the Controller of Accounts.  I have decided to refuse the title, and I shall refuse it. Nothing will induce me to accept it.  Do I make myself clear, or (smiling affectionately) am I lost in a mist of words?

MRS. CULVER (suddenly furious).  You are a brute.  You always were.  You never think of anybody but yourself.  My life has been one long sacrifice, and you know it perfectly well.  Perfectly well!  You talk about your work.  What about my work?  Why!  You’d be utterly useless without me.  You can’t even look after your own collars.  Could you go down to your ridiculous office without a collar?  I’ve done everything for you, everything!  And now! (Weeping).  I can’t even be called ’my lady.’  I only wanted to hear the parlourmaid call me ‘my lady.’  It seems a simple enough thing—­

CULVER (persuasively and softly, trying to seize her).  You divine little snob!

MRS. CULVER (in a supreme, blazing outbreak escaping him).  Let me alone!  I told you at the start I should never give way.  And I never will.  Never!  If you send that letter of refusal, do you know what I shall do?  I shall go and see the War Cabinet myself.  I shall tell them you don’t mean it.  I’ll make the most horrible scandal....  When I think of the Duke of Wellington—­