AMY O’CONNELL.  So am I ... by profession.

TREBELL.  It’s a poor religion unless you really believe in it.

AMY O’CONNELL. [Appealing to him.] If I were to live at Linaskea and have as many children as God sent, I should manage to make Justin pretty miserable!  And what would be left of me at all I should like to know?

TREBELL.  So Justin lives at Linaskea alone?

AMY O’CONNELL.  I’m told now there’s a pretty housemaid ... [she shrugs.]

TREBELL.  Does he drink too?

AMY O’CONNELL.  Oh, no.  You’d like Justin, I daresay.  He’s clever.  The thirteenth century’s what he knows about.  He has done a book on its statutes ... has been doing another.

TREBELL.  And after an evening’s hard work I find you here ready to flirt with.

AMY O’CONNELL.  What have you been working at?

TREBELL.  A twentieth century statute perhaps.  That’s not any concern of yours either.

      She does not follow his thought.

AMY O’CONNELL.  No, I prefer you in your unprofessional moments.

TREBELL.  Real flattery.  I didn’t know I had any.

AMY O’CONNELL.  That’s why you should flirt with me ...  Henry ... to cultivate them.  I’m afraid you lack imagination.

TREBELL.  One must choose something to lack in this life.

AMY O’CONNELL.  Not develop your nature to its utmost capacity.

TREBELL.  And then?

AMY O’CONNELL.  Well, if that’s not an end in itself ... [With a touch of romantic piety.] I suppose there’s the hereafter.

TREBELL. [Grimly material.] What, more developing!  I watch people wasting time on themselves with amazement ...  I refuse to look forward to wasting eternity.

AMY O’CONNELL. [Shaking her head.] You are very self-satisfied.

TREBELL.  Not more so than any machine that runs smoothly.  And I hope not self-conscious.

AMY O’CONNELL. [Rather attractively treating him as a child.] It would do you good to fall really desperately in love with me ... to give me the power to make you unhappy.

      He suddenly becomes very definite.

TREBELL.  At twenty-three I engaged myself to be married to a charming and virtuous fool.  I broke it off.

AMY O’CONNELL.  Did she mind much?

TREBELL.  We both minded.  But I had ideals of womanhood that I wouldn’t sacrifice to any human being.  Then I fell in with a woman who seduced me, and for a whole year led me the life of a French novel ... played about with my emotion as I had tortured that other poor girl’s brains.  Education you’d call it in the one case as I called it in the other.  What a waste of time!

AMY O’CONNELL.  And what has become of your ideal?

TREBELL. [Relapsing to his former mood.] It’s no longer a personal matter.

AMY O’CONNELL. [With coquetry.] You’re not interested in my character?