THE YOUTH [sitting up, markedly disenchanted] Numbers!!!  I cannot imagine anything drier or more repulsive.

THE MAIDEN.  They are fascinating, just fascinating.  I want to get away from our eternal dancing and music, and just sit down by myself and think about numbers.

THE YOUTH [rising indignantly] Oh, this is too much.  I have suspected you for some time past.  We have all suspected you.  All the girls say that you have deceived us as to your age:  that you are getting flat-chested:  that you are bored with us; that you talk to the ancients when you get the chance.  Tell me the truth:  how old are you?

THE MAIDEN.  Just twice your age, my poor boy.

THE YOUTH.  Twice my age!  Do you mean to say you are four?

THE MAIDEN.  Very nearly four.

THE YOUTH [collapsing on the altar with a groan] Oh!

THE MAIDEN.  My poor Strephon:  I pretended I was only two for your sake.  I was two when you were born.  I saw you break from your shell; and you were such a charming child!  You ran round and talked to us all so prettily, and were so handsome and well grown, that I lost my heart to you at once.  But now I seem to have lost it altogether:  bigger things are taking possession of me.  Still, we were very happy in our childish way for the first year, werent we?

STREPHON.  I was happy until you began cooling towards me.

THE MAIDEN.  Not towards you, but towards all the trivialities of our life here.  Just think.  I have hundreds of years to live:  perhaps thousands.  Do you suppose I can spend centuries dancing; listening to flutes ringing changes on a few tunes and a few notes; raving about the beauty of a few pillars and arches; making jingles with words; lying about with your arms round me, which is really neither comfortable nor convenient; everlastingly choosing colors for dresses, and putting them on, and washing; making a business of sitting together at fixed hours to absorb our nourishment; taking little poisons with it to make us delirious enough to imagine we are enjoying ourselves; and then having to pass the nights in shelters lying in cots and losing half our lives in a state of unconsciousness.  Sleep is a shameful thing:  I have not slept at all for weeks past.  I have stolen out at night when you were all lying insensible—­quite disgusting, I call it—­and wandered about the woods, thinking, thinking, thinking; grasping the world; taking it to pieces; building it up again; devising methods; planning experiments to test the methods; and having a glorious time.  Every morning I have come back here with greater and greater reluctance; and I know that the time will soon come—­perhaps it has come already—­when I shall not come back at all.

STREPHON.  How horribly cold and uncomfortable!