to place a limit to my regard for them. I may be fortunate enough
to gain friendship and even very warm affection from them; but my
loyalty to their husbands and their hearths and their happiness
obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of course I value
such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am surrounded with
women who are most dear to me. But every one of them has a post
sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In
every lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every
fair hillside, we meet that confounded board; and there is always
a gamekeeper round the corner. But what is that to the horror of
meeting it on every beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a
husband round the corner? I have had this accursed board standing
between me and every dear and desirable woman until I thought I
had lost the power of letting myself fall really and
wholeheartedly in love.

MRS. JUNO. Wasn't there a widow?

GREGORY. No. Widows are extraordinarily scarce in modern society.
Husbands live longer than they used to; and even when they do
die, their widows have a string of names down for their next.

MRS. JUNO. Well, what about the young girls?

GREGORY. Oh, who cares for young girls? They're sympathetic.
They're beginners. They don't attract me. I'm afraid of them.

MRS. JUNO. That's the correct thing to say to a woman of my age.
But it doesn't explain why you seem to have put your scruples in