"All right!... that you are my life—my life—my glorious life! I want you to see and know that but for you I am nothing—a wisp of straw blown about by all the winds of Heaven—a mere unit of consciousness in a blank, black void. See what comes of it! Here was I, before this unfortunate result of what is from my point of view a lamentable miscarriage of Destiny, a tolerably well-informed ... English male!... Well—what else am I?... Sonneteer, suppose we say...."
"Goose—suppose we say—or gander!"
"All right! Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look at me!"
"Well—I'm looking at you!"
"Am I showing the slightest consideration for you? Am I not showing the most cynical disregard of your welfare in life?"
"How?"
"By allowing you to throw yourself away upon me."
"It is no concern of yours what I do with myself. I do not intend you to have any voice in the matter. Besides—just be good enough to tell me, please!—suppose you made up your mind not to allow me, how would you set about it?"
This was a poser, and the gentleman was practically obliged to acknowledge it. "I couldn't say off-hand," said he. "I should have to consult materfamiliases in Good Society, and look up precedents. Several will occur at once to the student of Lemprière, some of which might be more to the point than anything Holy Writ offers in illustration. But all the cases I can recall at a moment's notice are vitiated by the motives of their male actors. These motives were pure—they were pure self-indulgence. In fact, their attitude towards their would-be charmers had the character of a sauve-qui-peut. It was founded on strong personal dislike, and has lent itself to Composition in the hands of the Old Masters...."
"Now I don't know what you are talking about. Answer my question and don't prevaricate. How would you set about it?"