Act II

The same day. The same room. Late in the afternoon. The spare chair for visitors has been replaced at the table, which is, if possible, more untidy than before. Marchbanks, alone and idle, is trying to find out how the typewriter works. Hearing someone at the door, he steals guiltily away to the window and pretends to be absorbed in the view. Miss Garnett, carrying the notebook in which she takes down Morell's letters in shorthand from his dictation, sits down at the typewriter and sets to work transcribing them, much too busy to notice Eugene. Unfortunately the first key she strikes sticks.

PROSERPINE
Bother! You've been meddling with my typewriter, Mr. Marchbanks; and there's not the least use in your trying to look as if you hadn't.

MARCHBANKS [timidly]
I'm very sorry, Miss Garnett. I only tried to make it write.

PROSERPINE
Well, you've made this key stick.

MARCHBANKS [earnestly]
I assure you I didn't touch the keys. I didn't, indeed. I only turned a little wheel. [He points irresolutely at the tension wheel.]

PROSERPINE
Oh, now I understand. [She sets the machine to rights, talking volubly all the time.] I suppose you thought it was a sort of barrel-organ. Nothing to do but turn the handle, and it would write a beautiful love letter for you straight off, eh?

MARCHBANKS [seriously]
I suppose a machine could be made to write love-letters. They're all the same, aren't they!

PROSERPINE [somewhat indignantly: any such discussion, except by way of pleasantry, being outside her code of manners]
How do I know? Why do you ask me?

MARCHBANKS
I beg your pardon. I thought clever people--people who can do business and write letters, and that sort of thing-- always had love affairs.

PROSERPINE [rising, outraged]
Mr. Marchbanks! [She looks severely at him, and marches with much dignity to the bookcase.]

MARCHBANKS [approaching her humbly]
I hope I haven't offended you. Perhaps I shouldn't have alluded to your love affairs.

PROSERPINE [plucking a blue book from the shelf and turning sharply on him]
I haven't any love affairs. How dare you say such a thing?

MARCHBANKS [simply]
Really! Oh, then you are shy, like me. Isn't that so?

PROSERPINE
Certainly I am not shy. What do you mean?

MARCHBANKS [secretly]
You must be: that is the reason there are so few love affairs in the world. We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry Of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy. [Very earnestly.] Oh, Miss Garnett, what would you not give to be without fear, without shame--

PROSERPINE [scandalized]
Well, upon my word!

MARCHBANKS [with petulant impatience]
Ah, don't say those stupid things to me: they don't deceive me: what use are they? Why