Martin: (Take care!) I know nothing at all about women.
Jessica: (Why?) Yet you pretend to tell love-stories.
Martin: (Because if you do that I can't answer for the consequences.) It is only by women's help that I tell them at all.
Jessica: (I'm not afraid of consequences. I'm not afraid of anything.) Who helped you tell this one?
Martin: (Your courage will have to be tested.) You did.
Jessica: Did I? How?
Martin: Because what you love in an apple-tree is not the leaf or the flower or the bough or the fruit—it is the apple-tree. Which is all of the things and everything besides; for it is the roots and the rind and the sap, it is motion and rest and color and shape and scent, and the shadows on the earth and the lights in the air—and still I have not said what the tree is that you love, for thought I should recapitulate it through the four seasons I should only be telling you those parts, none of which is what you love in an apple-tree. For no one can love the part more than the whole till love can be measured in pint-pots. And who can measure fountains? That's the answer, Mistress Jessica. I knew you'd have to give it up. (Take care, child, take care!)
Jessica: (I won't take care!). I knew the answer all the time.
Martin: Then you know what your apple-tree has to do with my story.
Jessica: Yes, I suppose so.