SHE. You're eye-sick, heart-sick of seeing the same foolish porcelain thing, a hundred years old, a hundred and fifty, and sixty, and seventy-- I don't know how old I am!
HE. Not an exhalation older than I--not an inhalation younger! Minikin?
SHE. Yes-- if you'll tell me-- if you'll prove me-- so my last particle of dust-- the tiniest speck of a molecule-- the merest electron----
HE. To begin with-- I dislike, suspect, deplore-- I had best say, feel compassion for what is called humanity-- or the animate, as opposed to the inanimate----
SHE. You say that so wisely-- you're such a philosopher-- say it again!
HE. That which is able to move can never be steadfast, you understand? Let us consider the creature at hand to whom you have referred with an undue excess of admiration adulterated with an undue excess of envy----
HE. To begin with-- I can only see part of her at once. She moves into my vision; she moves out of my vision; she is doomed to be wayward.
SHE. Yes, but that which you see of her----
HE. Is ugly, commonplace, unsightly. Her face a rose-face? It's veined with blood and the skin of it wrinkles-- her eyes are ever so near to a hen's-- her movements, if one would pay such a gait with regard-- her gait is unspeakably ungainly-- her hair----
HE. Luckily I've never seen it down-- I dare say it comes down in the dark, when it looks, most assuredly, like tangled weeds.
HE. Even were she beautiful, she were never so beautiful as thou!
HE. Even were she so beautiful as thou--lending her your eyes, and the exquisite head which holds them--like a cup two last beads of wine, like a stone two last drops of rain, green, nay, violet, nay, yellow, nay, gold----
HE. I can't, Minikin! Words were never given to man to phrase such a one as you are-- inanimate symbols can never embrace, embody, hold the animate dream that you are-- I must cease.
HE. And even were she so beautiful as thou, she couldn't stay beautiful.
HE. Humans change with each going moment. That is a gray-haired platitude. Just as I can see that creature only when she touches my vision, so I could only see her once, were she beautiful-- at best, twice or thrice-- you're more precious than when you came!
HE. Human pathos penetrates still deeper when one determines their inner life, as we've pondered their outer. Their inner changes far more desperately.