ST. OLPHERTS. Dear Lucas, the process of inducing a man to return to
his wife isn't generally described as temptation.

LUCAS. Ah, I won't hear another word of that proposal. [ST. OLPHERTS
shrugs his shoulders.] I say my people are offering me, through you, a
deliberate temptation to be a traitor. To which of these two women--my
wife or--[pointing to the door]--to her--am I really bound now? It
may be regrettable, scandalous, but the common rules of right and wrong
have ceased to apply here. Finally, Duke--and this is my message--I
intend to keep faith with the woman who sat by my bedside in Rome, the
woman to whom I shouted my miserable story in my delirium, the woman
whose calm, resolute voice healed me, hardened me, renewed in me the
desire to live.

ST. OLPHERTS. Ah! Oh, these modern nurses, in their greys, or browns,
and snowy bibs! They have much to answer for, dear Lucas.

LUCAS. No, no! Why will you persist, all of you, in regarding this as a
mere morbid infatuation, bred in the fumes of pastilles? It isn't so!
Laugh, if you care to; but this is a meeting of affinities, of the
solitary man and the truly sympathetic woman.

ST. OLPHERTS. And oh--oh these sympathetic women!

LUCAS. No! Oh, the unsympathetic women! There you have the cause of
half the world's misery. The unsympathetic women--you should have
loved one of them.

ST. OLPHERTS. I dare say I've done that in my time.