Ann: Don’t!
Ninian: You all think I’m a fool, don’t you? I can’t talk. I’m not witty. I take myself seriously, and my duties seriously. Supposing some day you discover that I was not stupid as I seemed?
Ann: I never thought you stupid.
Ninian: Because I don’t choose to play at eighteenth-century conversations with two ridiculous old men and one intolerable young girl, because I have nothing to say to your disreputable old aunt, you think I see nothing. I let them laugh at me because it is the only thing they can do; but sometimes when I am alone, I laugh at them—I, who have no sense of humour; Ninian, your one great blunder.
Ann: Please!
Ninian: Well, you’ve often had your little laughs against me. Now, for a change, you and I are going to be fellow conspirators.
Ann (frightened): What do you mean?
Ninian: I’m a simple man; I don’t go in for psychology. I can’t talk. I don’t want to. It is a curtain between you and life. Your uncle, your aunt, Molyneux, Selina, they make patterns over everything, but it doesn’t change the underneath.
Ann: They only pretend.