Cynthia. [Rising. With irony.] Button off his waistcoat!
[Thomas goes out.
Sir Wilfrid. [Delightedly.] Ah! So much the better for me. [Cynthia looks into the other room.] Now, then, never mind those two! [Cynthia moves restlessly.] Sit down.
Cynthia. I can't.
Sir Wilfrid. You're as nervous as—
Cynthia. Nervous! Of course I'm nervous! So would you be nervous if you'd had a runaway and smash up, and you were going to try it again. [She is unable to take her eyes from Vida and John, and Sir Wilfrid, noting this, grows uneasy.] And if some one doesn't do away with those calla lilies—the odor makes me faint! [Sir Wilfrid moves.] No, it's not the lilies! It's the orange blossoms!
Sir Wilfrid. Orange blossoms.
Cynthia. The flowers that grow on the tree that hangs over the abyss! [Sir Wilfrid promptly confiscates the vase of orange blossoms.] They smell of six o'clock in the evening. When Philip's fallen asleep, and little boys are crying the winners outside, and I'm crying inside, and dying inside and outside and everywhere.
Sir Wilfrid. [Returning to her side.] Sorry to disappoint you. They're artificial. [Cynthia shrugs her shoulders.] That's it! They're emblematic of artificial domesticity! And I'm here to help you balk it. [He sits down and Cynthia half rises and looks toward John and Vida.] Keep still now, I've a lot to say to you. Stop looking—
Cynthia. Do you think I can listen to you make love to me when the man who—who—whom I most despise in all the world, is reading poetry to the woman who—who got me into the fix I'm in!