from whom a fair share of the earth's space and of the light of day is
withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are
bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions
in which you and your kind are borne high. Those who would strip the
robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo
of a nation's discarded toys. Those who--mark me!--are already upon
the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as
yours is going!

ST. OLPHERTS. [Clapping his hands gently.] Bravo! Bravo! Really a flash
of the old fire. Admirable! [She walks away to the window with an
impatient exclamation.] Your present affaire du coeur does not wholly
absorb you, then, Mrs. Ebbsmith. Even now the murmurings of love have
not entirely superseded the thunderous denunciations of--h'm--You
once bore a nickname, my dear.

AGNES. [Turning sharply.] Ho! So you've heard that, have you?

ST. OLPHERTS. Oh, yes.

AGNES. Mad--Agnes? [He bows deprecatingly.] We appear to have studied
each other's history pretty closely.

ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, this is not the first time the same roof has
covered us.

AGNES. No?

ST. OLPHERTS. Five years ago, on a broiling night in July, I joined a
party of men who made an excursion from a club-house in St James's