“Faith, madam, that were to put an outrage upon nature, if I grasp your meaning aright.”
“Nay, sir, 'tis no great outrage. If our writers treat of the humours of an intrigue in high places, and if we find, on climbing to these high places, that no scandal is to be found there but only humdrum existence, is it not our duty to foster a scandal for the justification of our writers?”
“Mille tonnerres! Have I been cherishing a fiery flying serpent all this time? Have I been playing with a firebrand? Why, 't is in the aspect of Medusa I should be painting you, Mistress Barry; you should have ringletted snakes entwined among your hair. I' faith, madam, that is a pretty theory to propound in an honest man's house. We must become scandalous in order to save a playhouse poet from being accounted untrue to life?”
“And why not? Ah, Sir Godfrey, I greatly fear that you have no true feeling for art.”
The actress spoke sadly and shook her head with such exquisite simulation of melancholy as caused the painter to lay down his palette and roar with laughter.
“You have a true feeling for art, beyond doubt, my Barry,” he cried. “You have no room to reproach yourself, I dare swear. You have all the men in town at your feet, and all their wives ready to scratch out your eyes—and all for the advancement of art, you say. You are ready to jeopardise your own reputation in order to save that of your poets! Ah, what a kind heart hath the Barry!”
“Faith, Sir Godfrey, if I did not make a wife or two jealous, how could I know what a jealous woman looks like, and if I did not know what a jealous woman looks like, how could I act the part of a jealous woman in the playhouse?”
“Ah, how indeed? The play-goers worship you if their wives long for those ringlets that ensnare their husbands in their meshes. What is a wedding-ring against a wanton ringlet?”
“'T is my duty as an actress that compels me to seek for examples of the strongest emotions, Sir Godfrey—you perceive that that is so?”
“Ah, beyond doubt—beyond doubt, madam.”