But love--
LESBIA. Ob, love! Have you no imagination? Do you think I have
never been in love with wonderful men? heroes! archangels!
princes! sages! even fascinating rascals! and had the strangest
adventures with them? Do you know what it is to look at a mere
real man after that? a man with his boots in every corner, and
the smell of his tobacco in every curtain?
THE GENERAL [somewhat dazed] Well but--excuse my mentioning
it--dont you want children?
LESBIA. I ought to have children. I should be a good mother to
children. I believe it would pay the country very well to pay me
very well to have children. But the country tells me that I cant
have a child in my house without a man in it too; so I tell the
country that it will have to do without my children. If I am to
be a mother, I really cannot have a man bothering me to be a wife
at the same time.
THE GENERAL. My dear Lesbia: you know I dont wish to be
impertinent; but these are not the correct views for an English
lady to express.
LESBIA. That is why I dont express them, except to gentlemen who
wont take any other answer. The difficulty, you see, is that I
really am an English lady, and am particularly proud of being
one.
THE GENERAL.
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