LADY TORMINSTER.  You are absurd.

SIR GEOFFREY.  Would you have married him without a nose?

LADY TORMINSTER.  I might have.

SIR GEOFFREY.  Now you know you wouldn’t.  You’d have been afraid of what people would say.  And what would he have done when he became short-sighted, and had to wear glasses?

LADY TORMINSTER.  My cigarette has gone out.

SIR GEOFFREY. [Jumping up and handing her the box.] Take another.  Never re-light a cigarette—­it’s like dragging up the past.  Here.

LADY TORMINSTER.  I said only one.

SIR GEOFFREY.  This is not the hour for inflexibility.  The Medes and
Persians have all gone to bed.

     [She takes the cigarette; he lights it for her.

LADY TORMINSTER.  Tell me why you mean to leave us.  And remember—­I shan’t let this one go out.

SIR GEOFFREY.  My explanation will be handed to you with your cup of tea in the morning.

LADY TORMINSTER.  And you will be gone?

SIR GEOFFREY.  I shall be gone.  There is a train at 7.45—­which will be packed with husbands.  I shall breakfast in town.

LADY TORMINSTER.  Why?

SIR GEOFFREY.  Well, one must breakfast somewhere.  It’s a convention.

LADY TORMINSTER.  Sir Geoffrey, I want you to tell me what this means.

SIR GEOFFREY.  Give your decision, said the judge to the arbitrator, but never your reasons.  I go, because I go.  Besides, has one reasons?  Why do people die, or get married, or buy umbrellas?  Because of typhoid, love, or the rain?  Not at all.  Isn’t that so?

LADY TORMINSTER.  I wish you’d be serious.

SIR GEOFFREY.  I’m fearfully serious.  When Jack shot that tiger he had to go so near the brute that he held his life in his hands.  Do you know what was my chief impression as I lay there, with the ugly cat’s paw upon my chest, beginning to rip me?

LADY TORMINSTER. [Shuddering.] Horrible!  What?

SIR GEOFFREY.  I resented his having eaten something that smelt like onions.

LADY TORMINSTER. [Smiling.] A tiger!

SIR GEOFFREY.  Onions may have been his undoing.  That’s the beggar’s skin on the floor.  But you should have seen me rub Jack’s nose!

LADY TORMINSTER. [Warningly.] Sir Geoffrey, there’s very little cigarette left—­

SIR GEOFFREY.  There are lots more in the box—­and dawn is a long way off.  Hang it, Lady Torminster, don’t be in a hurry!  Do you hear the sea out there?  It’s breathing as regularly as old Jack.  And don’t you think this is fine?  Here we are, we two, meeting just as we shall meet on the other side of the Never-Never Land.  It’s a chance for a man to speak to a woman, and tell her things.

LADY TORMINSTER.  What things!

SIR GEOFFREY.  That’s just it—­what things?  What have I to say, after all?  I am going to-morrow because I am a fantastic, capricious ass.  Also because I’m lonely.