DEARTH. A might-have-been? They are ghosts, Margaret. I daresay I
'might have been' a great swell of a painter, instead of just this
uncommonly happy nobody. Or again, I might have been a worthless idle
waster of a fellow.

MARGARET (laughing). You!

DEARTH. Who knows? Some little kink in me might have set me off on the
wrong road. And that poor soul I might so easily have been might have
had no Margaret. My word, I'm sorry for him.

MARGARET. So am I. (She conceives a funny picture.) The poor old
Daddy, wandering about the world without me!

DEARTH. And there are other 'might-have-beens'--lovely ones, but
intangible. Shades, Margaret, made of sad folk's thoughts.

MARGARET (jigging about). I am so glad I am not a shade. How awful it
would be, Daddy, to wake up and find one wasn't alive.

DEARTH. It would, dear.

MARGARET. Daddy, wouldn't it be awful. I think men need daughters.

DEARTH. They do.

MARGARET. Especially artists.

DEARTH. Yes, especially artists.