MAGGIE. The Comtesse has taken a cottage in Surrey for the summer.

VENABLES. I am overjoyed.

COMTESSE. No, Charles, you are not. You no longer care. Fickle one!
And it is only thirty years.

[He sinks into a chair beside her.]

VENABLES. Those heavenly evenings, Comtesse, on the Bosphorus.

COMTESSE. I refuse to talk of them. I hate you.

[But she drops the book, and MAGGIE fades from the room. It is not a
very clever departure, and the old diplomatist smiles. Then he sighs
a beautiful sigh, for he does all things beautifully.]

VENABLES. It is moonlight, Comtesse, on the Golden Horn.

COMTESSE. Who are those two young things in a caique?

VENABLES. Is he the brave Leander, Comtesse, and is she Hero of the
Lamp?

COMTESSE. No, she is the foolish wife of the French Ambassador, and
he is a good-for-nothing British attache trying to get her husband's
secrets out of her.

VENABLES. Is it possible! They part at a certain garden gate.