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Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer
at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely
to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and
art you don't know how to live - you don't even know that. You
love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty
that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of
life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You
have lost life's secret. Oh, your English society seems to me
shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped
its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead
thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.

LADY STUTFIELD. I don't think one should know of these things. It
is not very, very nice, is it?

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear Miss Worsley, I thought you liked English
society so much. You were such a success in it. And you were so
much admired by the best people. I quite forget what Lord Henry
Weston said of you - but it was most complimentary, and you know
what an authority he is on beauty.

HESTER. Lord Henry Weston! I remember him, Lady Hunstanton. A
man with a hideous smile and a hideous past. He is asked
everywhere. No dinner-party is complete without him. What of
those whose ruin is due to him? They are outcasts. They are
nameless. If you met them in the street you would turn your head
away. I don't complain of their punishment. Let all women who
have sinned be punished.

[MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters from terrace behind in a cloak with a lace
veil over her head. She hears the last words and starts.]

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear young lady!

HESTER. It is right that they should be punished, but don't let
them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned,
let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other
there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on
each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free. Don't
have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to
women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to
be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that
pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim
to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded

LADY CAROLINE. Might I, dear Miss Worsley, as you are standing up,
ask you for my cotton that is just behind you? Thank you.

LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! I am so pleased you have
come up. But I didn't hear you announced.

MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, I came straight in from the terrace, Lady
Hunstanton, just as I was. You didn't tell me you had a party.

LADY HUNSTANTON. Not a party. Only a few guests who are staying
in the house, and whom you must know. Allow me. [Tries to help
her. Rings bell.

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