Why do you stick at "enemy"?
ST. OLPHERTS. It's not the word. Opponent! For the moment, perhaps,
opponent. I am never an enemy, I hope, where your sex is concerned.
AGNES. No, I am aware that you are not over-nice in the bestowal of
your patronage--where my sex is concerned.
ST. OLPHERTS. You regard my appearance in an affair of morals as a
quaint one?
AGNES. Your Grace is beginning to know me.
ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, you take pride, I hear, in belonging to--The
People. You would delight me amazingly by giving me an inkling of the
popular notion of my career.
AGNES. [Walking away.] Excuse me.
ST. OLPHERTS. [Following her.] Please! It would be instructive, perhaps
chastening. I entreat.
AGNES. No.
ST OLPHERTS. You are letting sentiment intrude itself. [Sitting, in
pain.] I challenge you.
AGNES. At Eton you were curiously precocious. The head-master,
referring to your aptitude with books, prophesied a brilliant future
for you; your tutor, alarmed by your attachment to a certain cottage at
Ascot which was minus a host, thanked his stars to be rid of you. At
Oxford you closed all books, except, of course, betting-books.
ST. OLPHERTS. I detected the tendency of the age--scholarship for the
masses. I considered it my turn to be merely intuitively intelligent.
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