"I have sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets; I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles with rouge."
"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.
"She has a great many titles. Some people call her Fashion, you busy men, Politics: it is all one,—tricked out and artificial. I mean London Life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"
"I wish you could fall in love with something." "I wish I could, with all my heart."
"But you are so /blaze/."
"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window—what do you see?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."
"I see not those where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are /blaze/, not I. Enough of this. You do not forget my commission with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"