"'And how is your husband?'
"'Y pensez-vous? My husband? Fancy that! Why, I have none!'
"This is precisely the plot and dialogue in Shaw's Candida.
"I enjoyed Candida so intensely; I could have kissed the author. How entirely like my own dramas! How closely modelled on the dialogue of the little girls!
"A husband of forty, vigorous, brave, honest, hard-working in a noble cause, loving and loved, father of two children, befriends a boy of eighteen, who is as wayward and conceited and inconsistent as only boys of eighteen can be. That boy suddenly tells the husband that he, the boy, loved Candida, the wife of the said husband. The boy, not satisfied with this amenity, becomes intolerably impudent, and the husband, acting on his immediate and just sentiment, wants to throw him out of the house.
"But this is too much of what ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands would do. So instead of kicking the impertinent lad into the street, the husband—invites him to lunch.
"I was so afraid the husband would in the end bundle the youth out of the room. To my intense delight the author did not forget the rules of the Cynic drama, and the boy remained for lunch.
"Bravo! Bravo! I secretly hoped the husband would solemnly charge the interesting youth to fit Candida with the latest corset. To my amazement that did not take place. But yet there was some relief for me in store: the husband invites the boy to pass the evening with his wife alone.
"This is, of course, precisely what most husbands would do.