ARDILAUN. I can't think why we discuss it. It's as useless to expect
sentiment from you as----
CYNICUS. To import coals to Newcastle. Who hawks goods in a stocked
market?
ARDILAUN. One likes sympathy.
CYNICUS. I sympathise profoundly; but talking about a leak doesn't stop
it.
ARDILAUN. This can't be stopped. It means the wreck of two
lives--Letitia's and mine.
CYNICUS. Together?
ARDILAUN. Together! Why, the universe would be re-created! It is
severment that ruins. There is she, brilliant, beautiful, famous, tied
for life to a money-grubber on 'Change: a wretch who cuts the leaves of
her books with his thumb, and snores over them like an apoplectic pug.
CYNICUS. He earns his dose.
ARDILAUN. Money again! That's all you think of--it's all my wife thinks
about. Petty parsimonies, cramping retrenchments, harrowing details of
household economy----
CYNICUS. Very necessary, even in the _menage_ of a popular poet.
ARDILAUN. They needn't be flaunted. To come in and read your most
brilliant stanzas to a woman who never looks up from darning----
CYNICUS. Your socks?
ARDILAUN. When you know of another who would listen to every word and
criticise----
CYNICUS. Pick holes, not mend them!