the worst of a ship. You're under observation all the time.

MRS. LUNN. But why not?

JUNO. Well, of course there's no reason: at least I suppose not.
But, you know, part of the romance of a journey is that a man
keeps imagining that something might happen; and he can't do that
if there are a lot of people about and it simply can't happen.

MRS. LUNN. Mr. Juno: romance is all very well on board ship; but
when your foot touches the soil of England there's an end of it.

JUNO. No: believe me, that's a foreigner's mistake: we are the
most romantic people in the world, we English. Why, my very
presence here is a romance.

MRS. LUNN [faintly ironical] Indeed?

JUNO. Yes. You've guessed, of course, that I'm a married man.

MRS. LUNN. Oh, that's all right. I'm a married woman.

JUNO. Thank Heaven for that! To my English mind, passion is not
real passion without guilt. I am a red-blooded man, Mrs. Lunn: I
can't help it. The tragedy of my life is that I married, when
quite young, a woman whom I couldn't help being very fond of. I
longed for a guilty passion--for the real thing--the wicked
thing; and yet I couldn't care twopence for any other woman when
my wife was about. Year after year went by: I felt my youth
slipping away without ever having had a romance in my life; for