LARRY. No: I haven't exhausted the interest of strolling about the old places and remembering and romancing about them.
NORA [hopefully]. Oh! You DO remember the places, then?
LARRY. Of course. They have associations.
NORA [not doubting that the associations are with her]. I suppose so.
LARRY. M'yes. I can remember particular spots where I had long fits of thinking about the countries I meant to get to when I escaped from Ireland. America and London, and sometimes Rome and the east.
NORA [deeply mortified]. Was that all you used to be thinking about?
LARRY. Well, there was precious little else to think about here, my dear Nora, except sometimes at sunset, when one got maudlin and called Ireland Erin, and imagined one was remembering the days of old, and so forth. [He whistles Let Erin Remember].
NORA. Did jever get a letter I wrote you last February?
LARRY. Oh yes; and I really intended to answer it. But I haven't had a moment; and I knew you wouldn't mind. You see, I am so afraid of boring you by writing about affairs you don't understand and people you don't know! And yet what else have I to write about? I begin a letter; and then I tear it up again. The fact is, fond as we are of one another, Nora, we have so little in common—I mean of course the things one can put in a letter—that correspondence is apt to become the hardest of hard work.
NORA. Yes: it's hard for me to know anything about you if you never tell me anything.