Ventnor. It depends on you to make it so.
Mrs. Dale. What a responsibility! What shall I do?
Ventnor. Talk to me—make me think you’re a little glad to see me; give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you’re out to everyone else.
Mrs. Dale. Is that all? (She hands him a cup of tea.) The cigarettes are at your elbow—. And do you think I shouldn’t have been glad to see you before?
Ventnor. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you.
Mrs. Dale. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions—
Ventnor. Do novelists?
Mrs. Dale. If you ask me—on paper!
Ventnor. Just so; that’s safest. My best things about the sea have been written on shore. (He looks at her thoughtfully.) But it wouldn’t have suited us in the old days, would it?
Mrs. Dale (sighing). When we were real people!