PROF. [Startled] My dear, your song was helping me like anything to get the mood. This paper is the very deuce—to balance between the historical and the natural.
THE WIFE. Who wants the natural?
PROF. [Grumbling] Umm! Wish I thought that! Modern taste! History may go hang; they're all for tuppence-coloured sentiment nowadays.
THE WIFE. [As if to herself] Is the Spring sentiment?
PROF. I beg your pardon, my dear; I didn't catch.
WIFE. [As if against her will—urged by some pent-up force] Beauty, beauty!
PROF. That's what I'm, trying to say here. The Orpheus legend symbolizes to this day the call of Beauty! [He takes up his pen, while she continues to stare out at the moonlight. Yawning] Dash it! I get so sleepy; I wish you'd tell them to make the after-dinner coffee twice as strong.
WIFE. I will.
PROF. How does this strike you? [Conning] "Many Renaissance pictures, especially those of Botticelli, Francesca and Piero di Cosimo were inspired by such legends as that of Orpheus, and we owe a tiny gem—like Raphael 'Apollo and Marsyas' to the same Pagan inspiration."
WIFE. We owe it more than that—rebellion against the dry-as-dust.