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would sign my death warrant without turning a hair. Magnus That is true, in a way. It is wonderful how subtle your mind is, as far as it goes. Orinthia It does not go as far as yours, I suppose. Magnus I don’t know. Our minds go together halfway. Whether it is that your mind stops there or else that the road forks, and you take the high road and I take the low road, I cannot say; but somehow after a certain point we lose one another. Orinthia And then you go back to your Amandas and Lysistratas: creatures whose idea of romance is a minister in love with a department, and whose bedside books are blue books. Magnus They are not always thinking of some man or other. That is a rather desirable extension of their interests, in my opinion. If Lysistrata had a lover I should not be interested in him in the least; and she would bore me to distraction if she could talk of nothing else. But I am very much interested in her department. Her devotion to it gives us a topic of endless interest. Orinthia Well, go to her: I am not detaining you. But don’t tell her that I have nothing to talk about but men; for that is a lie; and you know it. Magnus It is, as you say, a lie; and I know it. But I did not say it. Orinthia You implied it. You meant it. When those ridiculous political women are with us you talk to them all the time, and never say a word to me. Magnus Nor you to me. We cannot talk to one another in public: we have nothing to say that could be said before other people. Yet we find enough to say to one another when we are alone together. Would you change that if you could? Orinthia You are as slippery as an eel; but you shall not slip through my fingers. Why do you surround yourself with political bores and frumps and dowdy busybodies who can’t talk: they can only debate about their dull departments and their fads and their election chances. Rising impatiently. Who could talk to such people? If it were not for the nonentities of wives and husbands they drag about with them, there would be nobody to talk to at all. And even they can talk of nothing but the servants and the baby. Suddenly returning to her seat. Listen to me, Magnus. Why can you not be a real king? Magnus In what way, belovèdest? Orinthia Send all these stupid people packing. Make them do their drudgeries in their departments without bothering you about it, as you make your servants sweep the floors and dust the furniture. Live a really noble and beautiful life⁠—a kingly life⁠—with me. What you need to make you a real king is a real queen. Magnus But I have got one. Orinthia Oh, you are blind. You are worse than blind: you have low tastes. Heaven is offering you a rose; and you cling to a cabbage. Magnus Laughing. That is a very apt metaphor, belovèd. But what wise man, if you force him to choose between doing without roses and doing without cabbages, would not secure the cabbages? Besides, all these old married cabbages were once roses; and, though young things like you don’t remember that, their husbands do. They don’t notice the change. Besides, you should know better than anyone else that when a man gets tired of his wife and leaves her it is never because she has lost her good looks. The new love is often older and uglier than the old. Orinthia Why should I know it better than anyone else? Magnus Why, because you have been married twice; and both your husbands have run away from you to much plainer and stupider women. When I begged your present husband to come back to court for a while for the sake of appearances he said no man could call his soul his own in the same house with you. And yet that man was utterly infatuated with your beauty when he married you. Your first husband actually forced a good wife to divorce him so that he might marry you; but before two years were out he went back to her and died in her arms, poor chap. Orinthia Shall I tell you why these men could not live with me? It was because I am a thoroughbred, and they were only hacks. They had nothing against me: I was perfectly faithful to them. I kept their houses beautifully: I fed them better than they had ever been fed in their lives. But because I was higher than they were, and greater, they could not stand the strain of trying to live up to me. So I let them go their way, poor wretches, back to their cabbages. Look at the old creature Ignatius is living with now! She gives you his real measure. Magnus An excellent woman. Ignatius is quite happy with her. I never saw a man so changed. Orinthia Just what he is fit for. Commonplace. Bourgeoise. She trots through the streets shopping. Rising. I tread the plains of Heaven. Common women cannot come where I am; and common men find themselves out and slink away. Magnus It must be magnificent to have the consciousness of a goddess without ever doing a thing to justify it. Orinthia Give me a goddess’s work to do; and I will do it. I will even stoop to a queen’s work if you will share the throne with me. But do not pretend that people become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great, if the great things come along. But they are great just the same when the great things do not come along. If I never did anything but sit in this room and powder my face and tell you what a clever fool you are, I should still be heavens high above the millions of