There
is some damnable quality in them that destroys men's moral sense,
and carries them beyond honor and dishonor. You know that, don't
you?
LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps I do, Hector. But let me warn you once
for all that I am a rigidly conventional woman. You may think
because I'm a Shotover that I'm a Bohemian, because we are all so
horribly Bohemian. But I'm not. I hate and loathe Bohemianism. No
child brought up in a strict Puritan household ever suffered from
Puritanism as I suffered from our Bohemianism.
HECTOR. Our children are like that. They spend their holidays in
the houses of their respectable schoolfellows.
LADY UTTERWORD. I shall invite them for Christmas.
HECTOR. Their absence leaves us both without our natural
chaperones.
LADY UTTERWORD. Children are certainly very inconvenient
sometimes. But intelligent people can always manage, unless they
are Bohemians.
HECTOR. You are no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your
attraction is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count
yourself?
LADY UTTERWORD. I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can
assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do
the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct
thing, you can do just what you like. An ill-conducted, careless
woman gets simply no chance.
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