“Women everywhere,” Gisèle generalized, “have a hard time of it: but in particular do I pity the woman that is married to one of you moonstruck artists. She has not half a husband, she has but the tending of a baby with long legs—”
“It is so much later than I thought, that really now—” observed Ninzian, ineffectively.
“—And I might have had a dozen husbands—”
Miramon said, “But, surely, no woman of your well-known morality, my darling—”
“—I might, as you very well remember, have married Count Manuel himself—”
“I know. I can recall how near you came to marrying him. He was a dull, a cold-blooded and a rather dishonest clod-hopper: but the luck of Manuel Pig-Tender did not ever desert him,” said Miramon, sighing, “not even then!”
“I say, I might have had my pick of a dozen really prominent and looked-up-to warriors, who would have had the decency to remember our anniversary and my birthday, and in any event would never have been in the house twenty-four hours a day! Instead, here I am tied to a muddle-head who fritters away his time contriving dreams that nobody cares about one way or the other! And yet, even so—”
“And yet, even so—as you were no doubt going on to observe, my dearest,—even so, since your soliloquy pertains to matters in which our guest could not conceivably be interested—”
“And yet,” said Gisèle, with a heavier and a deadlier emphasis, “even so, if only you would be sensible about your silly business I could put up with the inconvenience of having you underfoot every moment. People need dreams to help them through the night, and nobody enjoys a really good dream more than I do when I have time for it, with the million and one things that are put upon me. But dreams ought to be wholesome—”
“My darling, now, as a matter of esthetics, as a mere point of fact—”