The bishop.  Quite right, dear:  stand up for your husband.  I hope you will always stand up for all your husbands. [He rises and goes to the hearth, where he stands complacently with his back to the fireplace, beaming at them all as at a roomful of children].

Leo.  Please dont talk as if I wanted to marry a whole regiment.  For me there can never be more than two.  I shall never love anybody but Rejjy and Sinjon.

Reginald.  A man with a face like a—­

Leo.  I wont have it, Rejjy.  It’s disgusting.

The bishop.  You see, my dear, youll exhaust Sinjon’s conversation too in a week or so.  A man is like a phonograph with half-a-dozen records.  You soon get tired of them all; and yet you have to sit at table whilst he reels them off to every new visitor.  In the end you have to be content with his common humanity; and when you come down to that, you find out about men what a great English poet of my acquaintance used to say about women:  that they all taste alike.  Marry whom you please:  at the end of a month he’ll be Reginald over again.  It wasnt worth changing:  indeed it wasnt.

Leo.  Then it’s a mistake to get married.

The bishop.  It is, my dear; but it’s a much bigger mistake not to get married.

The general [rising] Ha!  You hear that, Lesbia? [He joins her at the garden door].

Lesbia.  Thats only an epigram, Boxer.

The general.  Sound sense, Lesbia.  When a man talks rot, thats epigram:  when he talks sense, then I agree with him.

Reginald [coming off the oak chest and looking at his watch] It’s getting late.  Wheres Edith?  Hasnt she got into her veil and orange blossoms yet?

Mrs Bridgenorth.  Do go and hurry her, Lesbia.

Lesbia [going out through the tower] Come with me, Leo.

Leo [following Lesbia out] Yes, certainly.

The Bishop goes over to his wife and sits down, taking her hand and kissing it by way of beginning a conversation with her.

The bishop.  Alice:  Ive had another letter from the mysterious lady who cant spell.  I like that woman’s letters.  Theres an intensity of passion in them that fascinates me.

Mrs Bridgenorth.  Do you mean Incognita Appassionata?

The bishop.  Yes.

The general [turning abruptly; he has been looking out into the garden] Do you mean to say that women write love-letters to you?

The bishop.  Of course.

The general.  They never do to me.

The bishop.  The army doesnt attract women:  the Church does.

Reginald.  Do you consider it right to let them?  They may be married women, you know.

The bishop.  They always are.  This one is. [To Mrs Bridgenorth] Dont you think her letters are quite the best love-letters I get? [To the two men] Poor Alice has to read my love-letters aloud to me at breakfast, when theyre worth it.