MAGGIE. I promised you not to behave as other wives would do.
JOHN. It’s not understandable.
COMTESSE. ‘You may ask why I do this, John, and my reason is, I think that after a few weeks of Lady Sybil, every day, and all day, you will become sick to death of her. I am also giving her the chance to help you and inspire you with your work, so that you may both learn what her help and her inspiration amount to. Of course, if your love is the great strong passion you think it, then those weeks will make you love her more than ever and I can only say good-bye. But if, as I suspect, you don’t even now know what true love is, then by the next time we meet, dear John, you will have had enough of her.—Your affectionate wife, Maggie.’ Oh, why was not Sybil present at the reading of the will! And now, if you two will kindly excuse me, I think I must go and get that poor sufferer the eau de Cologne.
JOHN. It’s almost enough to make a man lose faith in himself.
COMTESSE. Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Shand.
MAGGIE [defending him]. You mustn’t hurt him. If you haven’t loved deep and true, that’s just because you have never met a woman yet, John, capable of inspiring it.
COMTESSE [putting her hand on MAGGIE’s shoulder]. Have you not, Mr. Shand?
JOHN. I see what you mean. But Maggie wouldn’t think better of me for any false pretences. She knows my feelings for her now are neither more nor less than what they have always been.
MAGGIE [who sees that he is looking at her as solemnly as a volume of sermons printed by request]. I think no one could be fond of me that can’t laugh a little at me.
JOHN. How could that help?