ANN.
Flatterer.
Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you don't want to marry me?
TANNER.
The Life Force.
I am in the grip of the Life Force.
ANN.
I don't understand in the least: it sounds like the Life Guards.
TANNER.
Why don't you marry Tavy?
He is willing.
Can you not be satisfied unless your prey struggles?
ANN. [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will never marry.
Haven't you noticed that that sort of man never marries?
TANNER.
What! a man who idolizes women! who sees nothing in nature but romantic scenery for love duets!
Tavy, the chivalrous, the faithful, the tenderhearted and true!
Tavy never marry!
Why, he was born to be swept up by the first pair of blue eyes he meets in the street.
ANN.
Yes, I know.
All the same, Jack, men like that always live in comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are adored by their landladies, and never get married.
Men like you always get married.
TANNER. [Smiting his brow] How frightfully, horribly true!
It has been staring me in the face all my life; and I never saw it before.
ANN.
Oh, it's the same with women.
The poetic temperament's a very nice temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I daresay; but it's an old maid's temperament.
TANNER.
Barren.
The Life Force passes it by.
ANN.
If that's what you mean by the Life Force, yes.
TANNER.
You don't care for Tavy?
ANN. [looking round carefully to make sure that Tavy is not within earshot] No.
TANNER.
And you do care for me?
ANN. [rising quietly and shaking her finger at him] Now Jack!
Behave yourself.
TANNER.
Infamous, abandoned woman!
Devil!
ANN.
Boa-constrictor!
Elephant!
TANNER.
Hypocrite!
ANN. [Softly] I must be, for my future husband's sake.
TANNER.