_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Well?
_Ventnor_. Your letters.
_Mrs. Dale (in a changed voice)_. My letters--do you remember them?
_Ventnor_. When I don"t, I reread them.
_Mrs. Dale (incredulous)_. You have them still?
_Ventnor (unguardedly)_. You haven"t mine, then?
_Mrs. Dale (playfully)_. Oh, you were a celebrity already. Of course I kept them! _(Smiling.)_ Think what they are worth now! I always keep them locked up in my safe over there. _(She indicates a cabinet.)_
_Ventnor (after a pause)_. I always carry yours with me.
_Mrs. Dale (laughing)_. You--
_Ventnor_. Wherever I go. _(A longer pause. She looks at him fixedly.)_ I have them with me now.
_Mrs. Dale (agitated)_. You--have them with you--now?
_Ventnor (embarra.s.sed)_. Why not? One never knows--
_Mrs. Dale_. Never knows--?
_Ventnor (humorously)_. Gad--when the bank-examiner may come round.
You forget I"m a married man.
_Mrs. Dale_. Ah--yes.
_Ventnor (sits down beside her)_. I speak to you as I couldn"t to anyone else--without deserving a kicking. You know how it all came about.
_(A pause.)_ You"ll bear witness that it wasn"t till you denied me all hope--
_Mrs. Dale (a little breathless)_. Yes, yes--
_Ventnor_. Till you sent me from you--
_Mrs. Dale_. It"s so easy to be heroic when one is young! One doesn"t realize how long life is going to last afterward. _(Musing.)_ Nor what weary work it is gathering up the fragments.
_Ventnor_. But the time comes when one sends for the china-mender, and has the bits riveted together, and turns the cracked side to the wall--
_Mrs. Dale_. And denies that the article was ever damaged?
_Ventnor_. Eh? Well, the great thing, you see, is to keep one"s self out of reach of the housemaid"s brush. _(A pause.)_ If you"re married you can"t--always. _(Smiling.)_ Don"t you hate to be taken down and dusted?
_Mrs. Dale (with intention)_. You forget how long ago my husband died.
It"s fifteen years since I"ve been an object of interest to anybody but the public.
_Ventnor (smiling)_. The only one of your admirers to whom you"ve ever given the least encouragement!
_Mrs. Dale_. Say rather the most easily pleased!
_Ventnor_. Or the only one you cared to please?
_Mrs. Dale_. Ah, you _haven"t_ kept my letters!
_Ventnor (gravely)_. Is that a challenge? Look here, then! _(He drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)_
_Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly)_. Why have you brought me these?
_Ventnor_. I didn"t bring them; they came because I came--that"s all.
_(Tentatively.)_ Are we unwelcome?
_Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear him)_. The very first I ever wrote you--the day after we met at the concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? _(She glances over it.)_ How perfectly absurd! Well, it"s not a compromising doc.u.ment.
_Ventnor_. I"m afraid none of them are.
_Mrs. Dale (quickly)_. Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because one could leave them about like safety matches?--Ah, here"s another I remember--I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first time. _(She reads it slowly.)_ How odd! How very odd!
_Ventnor_. What?
_Mrs. Dale_. Why, it"s the most curious thing--I had a letter of this kind to do the other day, in the novel I"m at work on now--the letter of a woman who is just--just beginning--
_Ventnor_. Yes--just beginning--?
_Mrs. Dale_. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of--well, of all my subsequent discoveries--is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this!
_Ventnor (eagerly)_. I told you so! You were all there!
_Mrs. Dale (critically)_. But the rest of it"s poorly done--very poorly. _(Reads the letter over.)_ H"m--I didn"t know how to leave off. It takes me forever to get out of the door.
_Ventnor (gayly)_. Perhaps I was there to prevent you! _(After a pause.)_ I wonder what I said in return?
_Mrs. Dale (interested)_. Shall we look? _(She rises.)_ Shall we--really? I have them all here, you know. _(She goes toward the cabinet.)_
_Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness)_. Oh--all!
_Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of packets)_. Don"t you believe me now?
_Ventnor_. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you were so very deaf.
_Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends an impatient hand for the letters)_. No--no; wait! I want to find your answer to the one I was just reading. _(After a pause.)_ Here it is--yes, I thought so!
_Ventnor_. What did you think?
_Mrs. Dale (triumphantly)_. I thought it was the one in which you quoted _Epipsychidion_--
_Ventnor_. Mercy! Did I _quote_ things? I don"t wonder you were cruel.