Do you expect me to believe you?

HE. Why not? I don't understand.

HER HUSBAND. Come! Don't underrate your own cleverness, Apjohn. I think you understand pretty well.

HE. I assure you I am quite at a loss. Can you not be a little more explicit?

HER HUSBAND. Don't overdo it, old chap. However, I will just be so far explicit as to say that if you think these poems read as if they were addressed, not to a live woman, but to a shivering cold time of day at which you were never out of bed in your life, you hardly do justice to your own literary powers--which I admire and appreciate, mind you, as much as any man. Come! own up. You wrote those poems to my wife. [An internal struggle prevents Henry from answering]. Of course you did. [He throws the poems on the table; and goes to the hearthrug, where he plants himself solidly, chuckling a little and waiting for the next move].

HE [formally and carefully] Mr Bompas: I pledge you my word you are mistaken. I need not tell you that Mrs Bompas is a lady of stainless honor, who has never cast an unworthy thought on me. The fact that she has shown you my poems--

HER HUSBAND. That's not a fact. I came by them without her knowledge. She didn't show them to me.

HE. Does not that prove their perfect innocence? She would have shown them to you at once if she had taken your quite unfounded view of them.

HER HUSBAND [shaken] Apjohn: play fair. Don't abuse your intellectual gifts. Do you really mean that I am making a fool of myself?

HE [earnestly] Believe me, you are. I assure you, on my honor as a gentleman, that I have never had the slightest feeling for Mrs Bompas beyond the ordinary esteem and regard of a pleasant acquaintance.

HER HUSBAND [shortly, showing ill humor for the first time] Oh, indeed. [He leaves his hearth and begins to approach Henry slowly, looking him up and down with growing resentment].

HE [hastening to improve the impression made by his mendacity] I should never have dreamt of writing poems to her. The thing is absurd.

HER HUSBAND [reddening ominously] Why is it absurd?

HE [shrugging his shoulders] Well, it happens that I do not admire Mrs Bompas--in that way.

HER HUSBAND [breaking out in Henry's face] Let me tell you that Mrs Bompas has been admired by better men than you, you soapy headed little puppy, you.

HE [much taken aback] There is no need to insult me like this. I assure you, on my honor as a--

HER HUSBAND [too angry to tolerate a reply, and boring Henry more and more towards the piano] You don't admire Mrs Bompas! You would never dream of writing poems to Mrs Bompas! My wife's not good enough for you, isn't she. [Fiercely] Who are you, pray, that you should be so jolly superior?

HE. Mr Bompas: I can make allowances for your jealousy--

HER HUSBAND. Jealousy! do you suppose I'm jealous of YOU? No, nor of ten like you. But if you think I'll stand here and let you insult my wife in her own house, you're mistaken.

HE [very uncomfortable with his back against the piano and Teddy standing over him threateningly] How can I convince you? Be reasonable. I tell you my relations with Mrs Bompas are relations of perfect coldness--of indifference--

HER HUSBAND [scornfully] Say it again: say it again.