Lady Stutfield The Ideal Man,° then, in his relations to us.

Lady Caroline He would probably be extremely realistic.

Mrs Allonby The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

Lady Hunstanton But how could he do both, dear?

Mrs Allonby He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him.

Lady Stutfield Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women.

Mrs Allonby If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don’t want.

Lady Caroline As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments.

Mrs Allonby He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman’s duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.

Lady Hunstanton How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

Lady Stutfield Thank you, thank you. It has been quite, quite entrancing. I must try and remember it all. There are such a number of details that are so very, very important.

Lady Caroline But you have not told us yet what the reward of the Ideal Man is to be.

Mrs Allonby His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.

Lady Stutfield But men are so terribly, terribly, exacting, are they not?

Mrs Allonby That makes no matter. One should never surrender.°

Lady Stutfield Not even to the Ideal Man?