This much of the prologue being accomplished, the personages proceed to the real business of the action. Crampton, outraged and disgusted beyond measure by the manners and dress of his progeny, demands that Phil and Dolly be given over to his care and custody on the ground that their mother is an unfit person to have the charge of them. Meanwhile Valentine, the dentist, has felt a yearning towards Gloria, the elder daughter, and Gloria, after surviving five previous sieges of her heart, looks upon him not unkindly. One brief interview, in fact, serves to advance him to a point whereat he may safely offer her a chaste caress. Her mother, greatly astonished by his easy victory over Gloria’s battalions of modern principles, seeks an explanation. Valentine very blandly discusses the situation.
The duel of sex, he says, is much like the contest between the makers of guns and the makers of ship’s armor. One year one is ahead and the next year the other. In the old days, he says, mothers taught their daughters old-fashioned methods of resisting the wiles of old-fashioned Romeos, and for a space this method of defense was successful. But by-and-by the Romeos learned its weak points, and the fond mammas of England had to devise some new armor. They hit upon scientific education, and for awhile it, too, was successful. But in the end the old story was repeated.
“What did the man do?” says Valentine. “Just what the artilleryman does—went one better than the woman—educated himself scientifically and beat her at that game just as he had beaten her at the old one. I learned how to circumvent the Woman’s Rights’ woman before I was twenty-three....”
But before the play is done the philosophical duellist of sex finds himself the vanquished rather than the victor. He begins to have doubts about his preparedness for the marriage state and essays a polite withdrawal. But Gloria, weighted with the wisdom of five previous amorous encounters, is no easy adversary to lose.
“Be sensible,” says the valiant Valentine. “It’s no use. I haven’t a penny in the world.”
“Can’t you earn one?” demands Gloria. “Other people do.”
Valentine, scenting a chance to flee, is half-delighted, half-frightened.
“I never could!” he declares. “You’d be unhappy.... My dearest love, I should be the merest fortune-hunting adventurer if——”
She grips his arm and kisses him.
“Oh, Lord!” he gasps. “O, I——”