Arden:  She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.

Homeware:  The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to measure her widowhood by years.  His, from the altar to the tomb.  As it might be read, a one day’s walk!

Arden:  Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a whimsical feminine delicacy?

Homeware:  You have argued it with her?

Arden:  I have presumed.

Homeware:  And still she refused her hand!

Arden:  She commended me to you, sir.  She has a sound judgement of persons.

Homeware:  I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy, on the ground of her being a humorous damsel.  Your predecessors had also argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical feminine delicacy.  Where is the difference between you?  Evidently she cannot perceive it, and I have to seek:  You will have had many conversations with Astraea?

Arden:  I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.

Homeware:  You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.

Arden:  As much as I want more wisdom.

Homeware:  You would call her your Muse?

Arden:  So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.

Homeware:  You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden.  She has prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.

Arden:  She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.

Homeware:  No harder task could be set a young man in modern days.  Oh, the humorous damsel.  You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.

Arden:  Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can bear inspection.  Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me a hearing.

Homeware:  Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock is unholy.  Further, it passes me to explain.  The young lady lands us where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous intention.

Arden:  What can I do?

Homeware:  Love and war have been compared.  Both require strategy and tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.

Arden:  I will take to heart what you say, sir.

Homeware:  Take it to head.  There must be occasional descent of lovers’ heads from the clouds.  And Professor Spiral,—­But here we have a belated breeze of skirts.

(The reference is to the arrival of Lyra, breathless.)

SceneIII

Homeware, Arden, Lyra

Lyra:  My own dear uncle Homeware!

Homeware:  But where is Pluriel?