Valentine?
VALENTINE. Not to you---not to her, perhaps. But I know what the
men felt. (With ludicrously genuine earnestness.) Have you ever
thought of the wrecked lives, the marriages contracted in the
recklessness of despair, the suicides, the---the---the---
GLORIA (interrupting him contemptuously). Mother: this man is a
sentimental idiot. (She sweeps away to the fireplace.)
MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Oh, my d e a r e s t Gloria, Mr. Valentine
will think that rude.
VALENTINE. I am not a sentimental idiot. I am cured of sentiment
for ever. (He sits down in dudgeon.)
MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to
unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the
genuine good manners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar
(Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so.
GLORIA. Mother! You apologize for me to h i m!
MRS. CLANDON. My dear: you have some of the faults of youth as well
as its qualities; and Mr. Valentine seems rather too old fashioned in
his ideas about his own sex to like being called an idiot. And now had
we not better go and see what Dolly is doing? (She goes towards the
window. Valentine rises.)
GLORIA. Do you go, mother. I wish to speak to Mr. Valentine alone.
MRS. CLANDON (startled into a remonstrance).
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