WOMAN. Don't leave me.
STRANGER. I must.
WOMAN. Don't go. You were the best of them all.
TEMPTER. Do you want to begin again from the beginning? That would be a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one another, they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty, each one of you, before we part.
WOMAN. I don't know what it is. The highest and the loveliest of things, that has to sink to the lowest and the ugliest.
STRANGER. A caricature of godly love.
TEMPTER. An annual plant, that blossoms during the engagement, goes to seed in marriage and then sinks to the earth to wither and die.
WOMAN. The loveliest flowers have no seed. The rose is the flower of love.
STRANGER. And the lily that of innocence. That can form seeds, but only opens her white cup to kisses.
TEMPTER. And propagates her kind with buds, out of which fresh lilies spring, like chaste Minerva who sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus, and not from his royal loins. Oh yes, children, I've understood much, but never this: what the beloved of my soul has to do with.... (He hesitates.)