VERA—[_After a pause._] Shall I ever have a lover, do you suppose?
THE DOVE—[_Turning the sword over._] No, I suppose not.
VERA—Yet Amelia and I have made it our business to know—everything.
VERA—Yes. We say this little thing in French and that little thing in Spanish, and we collect knives and pistols, but we only shoot our buttons off with the guns and cut our darning cotton with the knives, and we’ll never, never be perverse though our entire education has been about knees and garters and pinches on hindquarters—elegantly bestowed—, and we keep a few animals—very badly—hoping to see something first-hand—and our beds are as full of yellow pages and French jokes as a bird’s nest is full of feathers— God! [_she stands up abruptly_] little one, why do I wear lace at my elbows?
VERA—Nonsense! Lace swinging back and forth like that, tickling my arms, well, that’s not beauty——
VERA—[_Returning to her couch._] I sometimes wonder what you do know, you are such a strange happening, anyway. Well then, tell me what you think of me and what you think of my sister, you have been here long enough. Why do you stay? Do you love us?
THE DOVE—You misunderstand me. I call that imagination that is the growth of ignorance, religion.
THE DOVE—Because it goes farther than knowledge.
VERA—That you had lived all we pretend we have.
VERA—I don’t know, but somehow someone like you should know—everything.
VERA—I know, that’s what’s so odd. [_Impatiently._] For heaven’s sake, will you stop polishing that infernal weapon!
“Take all the blood stains off first, then polish it.”
VERA—There you are; she is quite mad, there’s no doubt. Blood stains! Why, she would be afraid to cut her chops with it—and as for the rest of her manifestations—nonsense!
THE DOVE—She carries a pistol with her, just to go around the corner for a pound of butter.
VERA—It’s wicked! She keeps an enormous blunderbuss in the corner of her room, but when I make up her bed, all I find is some Parisienne bathing girl’s picture stuck full of pin holes——
THE DOVE—I know, she sits beside me for hours making those pin holes in the borders of everything in sight.
VERA—[_With a strange anger._] Why do you stay?
VERA—I should think this house and two such advanced virgins as Amelia and myself would drive you to despair——