GERVASE (taking it).  Good-bye, Miss Knowle. . . . (Gently) May I kiss your hands, Melisande?

MELISANDE (pathetically).  Oh, don’t! (She hides her face in them.)

GERVASE.  Dear hands. . . .  May I kiss your lips, Melisande? (She says nothing.  He comes closer to her) Melisande!

(He is about to put his arms round her, but she breaks away from him.)

MELISANDE.  Oh, don’t, don’t!  What’s the good of pretending?  It was only pretence this morning—­what’s the good of going on with it?  I thought you were so different from other men, but you’re just the same, just the same.  You talk about the things they talk about, you wear the clothes they wear.  You were my true knight, my fairy Prince, this morning, and this afternoon you come down dressed like that (she waves her hand at it) and tell me that you are on the Stock Exchange!  Oh, can’t you see what you’ve done?  All the beautiful world that I had built up for you and me—­shattered, shattered.

GERVASE (going to her).  Melisande!

MELISANDE.  No, no!

GERVASE (stopping).  All right.

MELISANDE (recovering herself).  Please go.

GERVASE (with a smile).  Well, that’s not quite fair, you know.

MELISANDE.  What do you mean?

GERVASE.  Well, what about my beautiful world—­the world that I had built up?

MELISANDE.  I don’t understand.

GERVASE.  What about your pretence this morning?  I thought you were so different from other women, but you’re just the same, just the same.  You were my true lady, my fairy Princess, this morning; and this afternoon the Queen, your mother, disabled herself by indigestion, tells me that you do all the housekeeping for her just like any ordinary commonplace girl.  Your father, the King, has obviously never had a battle-axe in his hand in his life; your suitor, Prince Robert of Coote, is much more at home with a niblick than with a lance; and your cousin, the Lady Jane——­

MELISANDE (sinking on to the sofa and hiding her face).  Oh, cruel, cruel!

GERVASE (remorsefully).  Oh, forgive me, Melisande.  It was horrible of me.

MELISANDE.  No, but it’s true.  How could any romance come into this house?  Now you know why I wanted you to take me away—­away to the ends of the earth with you.

GERVASE.  Well, that’s what I want to do.

MELISANDE.  Ah, don’t!  When you’re on the Stock Exchange!

GERVASE.  But there’s plenty of romance on the Stock Exchange. (Nodding his head) Oh yes, you want to look out for it.

MELISANDE (reproachfully).  Now you’re laughing at me again.

GERVASE.  My dear, I’m not.  Or if I am laughing at you, then I am laughing at myself too.  And if we can laugh together, then we can be happy together, Melisande.

MELISANDE.  I want romance, I want beauty.  I don’t want jokes.

GERVASE.  I see what it is.  You don’t like my knickerbockers.