The fact that her past is always her lover, and
her future invariably her husband.
LORD GORING. Lady Chiltern knows nothing of the kind of life to
which you are alluding.
MRS. CHEVELEY. A woman whose size in gloves is seven and three-
quarters never knows much about anything. You know Gertrude has
always worn seven and three-quarters? That is one of the reasons why
there was never any moral sympathy between us. . . . Well, Arthur, I
suppose this romantic interview may be regarded as at an end. You
admit it was romantic, don't you? For the privilege of being your
wife I was ready to surrender a great prize, the climax of my
diplomatic career. You decline. Very well. If Sir Robert doesn't
uphold my Argentine scheme, I expose him. VOILE TOUT.
LORD GORING. You mustn't do that. It would be vile, horrible,
infamous.
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Oh! don't use big words.
They mean so little. It is a commercial transaction. That is all.
There is no good mixing up sentimentality in it. I offered to sell
Robert Chiltern a certain thing. If he won't pay me my price, he
will have to pay the world a greater price. There is no more to be
said. I must go. Good-bye. Won't you shake hands?
LORD GORING. With you? No. Your transaction with Robert Chiltern
may pass as a loathsome commercial transaction of a loathsome
commercial age; but you seem to have forgotten that you came here to-
night to talk of love, you whose lips desecrated the word love, you
to whom the thing is a book closely sealed, went this afternoon to
the house of one of the most noble and gentle women in the world to
degrade her husband in her eyes, to try and kill her love for him, to
put poison in her heart, and bitterness in her life, to break her
idol, and, it may be, spoil her soul.
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