Virginia:  How treacherous is our memory when we have most the longing to recall great sayings!

Osier:  True, I conceive that my notes will be precious.

Winifred:  You could take notes!

Lady Oldlace:  It seems a device for missing the quintessential.

Swithin:  Scraps of the body to the loss of the soul of it.  We can allow that our friend performed good menial service.

Winifred:  I could not have done the thing.

Swithin:  In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.

Lady Oldlace:  One hardly felt one breathed.

Virginia:  I confess it moved me to tears.

Swithin:  There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection.  Such subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.

Winifred:  Surely there were passages of a distinct and most exquisite pathos.

Lady Oldlace:  As in all great oratory!  The key of it is the pathos.

Virginia:  In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by the pathos.  All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos.  My tears were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.

Swithin:  I must make confession.  He played on me too.

Osier:  We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of a master hand.

Arden:  An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a
Stradivarius.

Dame Dresden:  Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden?  What could have detained you?

Arden:  Ah, Dame.  It may have been a warning that I am a discordant instrument.  I do not readily vibrate.

Dame Dresden:  A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil society.  You have lost what cannot be recovered.

Arden:  There are the notes.

Osier:  Yes, the notes.

Swithin:  You can be satisfied with the dog’s feast at the table, Mr.
Arden!

Osier:  Ha!

Virginia:  Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every variation of his tones.

Arden:  Astraea!

Lady Oldlace:  She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man.

Osier:  Yes, yes.  I have the words [reads]:  ’Woman is to the front of man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization.  I see,’ he says. ’the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough winds.’

Dame Dresden:  And of Astraea herself, what were the words?  ’Nature’s dedicated widow.’

Swithin:  Vestal widow, was it not?