VALENTINE. Well, what am I to think when I learn that Miss Clandon
has made exactly the same speeches to other men that she has made to
me---when I hear of at least five former lovers, with a tame naval
lieutenant thrown in? Oh, it's too bad.

MRS. CLANDON. But you surely do not believe that these affairs---
mere jokes of the children's---were serious, Mr. Valentine?

VALENTINE. Not to you---not to her, perhaps. But I know what the
men felt. (With ludicrously genuine earnestness.) Have you ever
thought of the wrecked lives, the marriages contracted in the
recklessness of despair, the suicides, the---the---the---

GLORIA (interrupting him contemptuously). Mother: this man is a
sentimental idiot. (She sweeps away to the fireplace.)

MRS. CLANDON (shocked). Oh, my d e a r e s t Gloria, Mr. Valentine
will think that rude.

VALENTINE. I am not a sentimental idiot. I am cured of sentiment
for ever. (He sits down in dudgeon.)

MRS. CLANDON. Mr. Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to
unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the
genuine good manners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar
(Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so.

GLORIA. Mother! You apologize for me to h i m!

MRS. CLANDON. My dear: you have some of the faults of youth as well