loved you--at least I didn't love you,--I mean, I thought I loved
Adolphus--at least I was sure of it at the time; but I'm sure I don't
now. Oh, how cruel of you!

_Ad_. But if it was not my wig and spectacles and stammer for which you
felt a magnetic affinity, I want to know exactly what it was you did
love; because I am precisely the same human being without them as with
them. What about me struck that mysterious chord of sympathy which
vibrated in your affections when I was Plumper, which failed to strike it
as Gresham? Why should not our hearts still beat in sweet accord without
my wig? Why should not "this exquisite garment, which we have both
worn--[_takes up the dress, which is lying on a chair in the corner_]--be
the symbol of that internal robe which costumes our united souls, woven
from the texture of our affections," without my spectacles?

_El_. Mr Gresham, how dare you talk such nonsense? The texture of our
affections indeed! mine are dead--basely, foully murdered. Oh, was ever
woman so cruelly humiliated?

_Ad_. Nay, Elaine, I merely wished to prove to you that your aversion
for me was entirely unfounded. You have proved to me that your love for
Adolphus, in the abstract, is as baseless and unsubstantial. I am not
sorry under the circumstances that it should have been murdered, for it
was a poor exotic. Let us not attempt to analyse the mysterious nature
of that passion which is too precious a plant to tear up by the roots in
order to discover the origin of its existence, but learn rather from this
lesson, so painful to us both, that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamt of even in the philosophy of Comte, the doctrines
of the aesthete, or the politics of Mr Gladstone. And now, Elaine,
farewell,--this time you need not fear my coming back from Naples.