Pala. But when the second comes—­

Dor. When it does come, you are so given to variety, that you would make a wife of me in another quarter.

Pala. No, never, except I were married to you:  married people can never oblige one another; for all they do is duty, and consequently there can be no thanks:  But love is more frank and generous than he is honest; he’s a liberal giver, but a cursed pay-master.

Dor. I declare I will have no gallant; but, if I would, he should never be a married man; a married man is but a mistress’s half-servant, as a clergyman is but the king’s half-subject:  For a man to come to me that smells of the wife!  ’Slife, I would as soon wear her old gown after her, as her husband.

Pala. Yet ’tis a kind of fashion to wear a princess’s cast shoes; you see the country ladies buy them, to be fine in them.

Dor. Yes, a princess’s shoes may be worn after her, because they keep their fashion, by being so very little used; but generally a married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion:  his behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married,—­and, if we could look within his breeches, we should find him married there too.

Pala. Am I then to be discarded for ever? pray do but mark how that word sounds:  for ever! it has a very damn’d sound, Doralice.

Dor. Ay, for ever! it sounds as hellishly to me, as it can do to you, but there’s no help for it.

Pala. Yet, if we had but once enjoyed one another!—­but then once only, is worse than not at all:  It leaves a man with such a lingering after it.

Dor. For aught I know, ’tis better that we have not; we might upon trial have liked each other less, as many a man and woman, that have loved as desperately as we, and yet, when they came to possession, have sighed and cried to themselves, Is this all?

Pala. That is only, if the servant were not found a man of this world; but if, upon trial, we had not liked each other, we had certainly left loving; and faith, that’s the greater happiness of the two.

Dor. ’Tis better as ’tis; we have drawn off already as much of our love as would run clear; after possessing, the rest is but jealousies, and disquiets, and quarrelling, and piecing.

Pala. Nay, after one great quarrel, there’s never any sound piecing; the love is apt to break in the same place again.

Dor. I declare I would never renew a love; that’s like him, who trims an old coach for ten years together; he might buy a new one better cheap.

Pala. Well, madam, I am convinced, that ’tis best for us not to have enjoyed; but, gad, the strongest reason is, because I can’t help it.