Ad. I need not say with what pleasure I shall look forward to it. Au revoir, Lady
Elaine. [Aside.] You do not know how you have been tempting me to abandon all my cherished political convictions for your sake. It is to be hoped that the Radicals will not follow up their success with the caucus by organising the young ladies of their party and letting them loose on society as propagandists of their Utopian ideas and political fallacies.
[Exeunt omnes.
SCENE II.—Lady Gules’s Boudoir. Elaine and Adolphus.
Ad. Dear Lady Elaine, Lady Gules has given me special permission and opportunity to explain myself more fully than was possible yesterday. Please tell me why you were so surprised at what I said, and why you think me so very objectionable?
El. I don’t think you at all objectionable, Mr Gresham, as a member of society; on the contrary, I think you charming; though I do feel that, magnetically, we are wide as the poles asunder! Oh, believe me, we have no grounds of common sympathy, either in matters of philosophical, political, or religious
thought—and above all, in art! You seem to lack that enthusiasm for humanity which could alone constitute an affinity between us. I was surprised, because I had hoped to find in you an intelligent companion; and mortified at the discovery that you could not rise to higher ground than that of an ordinary admirer,—men in these days seem to think that women have no other raison d’être except to be made love to.
Ad. I do not think that is a new idea, Lady Elaine; but is it absolutely necessary, in order that you should return the deep affection I feel for you, that we should agree politically, philosophically, theologically, and æsthetically? In old days women did not trouble themselves on these matters, but trusted to their hearts rather than to their heads to guide their affections.
El. And so I do now. I feel instinctively that we are not kindred spirits; that the mysterious chord of sympathy which vibrates in the heart of a girl with the first tone of the voice of the man she is destined to love, does not exist between us. Oh, indeed, indeed, Mr Gresham, although I adore Frederic Harrison as a thinker, as much as I dislike Mr
Mallock—though I read every word he writes as a duty—I am not destitute of romance. I am a profound believer in the doctrine of affinity. Who that accepts, as I do, the marvellous teaching of Comte, and remembers that the highest ideas which it contains were inspired by a woman, could fail to be? But I shall know the man towards whom I am destined to occupy the relation that Comte’s Countess did to him, at a glance. No words will need to pass between us to assure us that we are one in sentiment. It will be as impossible for him to be indifferent to elevating the taste of the masses in matters of domestic detail, or be otherwise wanting in a whole-hearted devotion to the service of humanity, or to scoff at the theory of evolution, as it would be for him to accept the errors and superstitions of an obsolete theology, or the antiquated dogmas of the Conservatives about landed property.