earth did you get these morbid tastes? You seem to have been well
brought up in a normal, healthy, respectable, middle-class family.
Yet you go on like the most unwholesome product of the rankest
Bohemianism.

HYPATIA. Thats just it. I'm fed up with--

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Horrible expression. Dont.

HYPATIA. Oh, I daresay it's vulgar; but theres no other word for it.
I'm fed up with nice things: with respectability, with propriety!
When a woman has nothing to do, money and respectability mean that
nothing is ever allowed to happen to her. I dont want to be good; and
I dont want to be bad: I just dont want to be bothered about either
good or bad: I want to be an active verb.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. An active verb? Oh, I see. An active verb
signifies to be, to do, or to suffer.

HYPATIA. Just so: how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do;
and I'm game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing
but being good and nice and ladylike I simply wont. Stay down here
with us for a week; and I'll shew you what it means: shew it to you
going on day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Shew me what?

HYPATIA. Girls withering into ladies. Ladies withering into old
maids. Nursing old women. Running errands for old men. Good for
nothing else at last. Oh, you cant imagine the fiendish selfishness