ALICE (drawling). Yes, they have always been rather admired.
JOANNA (snapping). By the painters for whom you sat when you were an artist's model?
ALICE (measuring her). So that has leaked out, has it!
JOANNA (ashamed). I shouldn't have said that.
ALICE (their brief friendship over). Do you think I care whether you know or not?
JOANNA (making an effort to be good). I'm sure you don't. Still, it was cattish of me.
ALICE. It was.
JOANNA (in flame). I don't see it.
(MRS. DEARTH laughs and forgets her, and with the entrance of a man from the dining room JOANNA drifts elsewhere. Not so much a man, this newcomer, as the relic of what has been a good one; it is the most he would ever claim for himself. Sometimes, brandy in hand, he has visions of the WILL DEARTH he used to be, clear of eye, sees him but a field away, singing at his easel or, fishing-rod in hand, leaping a stile. Our WILL stares after the fellow for quite a long time, so long that the two melt into the one who finishes LOB's brandy. He is scarcely intoxicated as he appears before the lady of his choice, but he is shaky and has watery eyes.)
(ALICE has had a rather wild love for this man, or for that other one, and he for her, but somehow it has gone whistling down the wind. We may expect therefore to see them at their worst when in each other's company.)