EURTRUDE Monsieur! Here’s another shrovetide reveller!
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX (in cycling bloomers) (she comes sailing in). How do I look?
HUBERT Whatever next.
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX Is that all you can find to say to me?
EURTRUDE Personally, I am gone with the wind.
She disappears.
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX What an idiot she is. And you just sit there gaping!
HUBERT Er …
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX No doubt about it; all I get from you is suspicion and incomprehension.
HUBERT Well, you know me … out-and-out modernism …
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX What a let-down.
Silence.
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX (resolutely) if that’s how it is, I’ll take them off.
HUBERT No no, not now. I’m working.
Mme DE CHAMPBAUX You’re working! Is Icarus back?
HUBERT No, but I’m writing another novel.
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX Then you’ve got your ardour back?
HUBERT My ardour for work.
Mme DE CHAMPVAUX All I can do now, then, is go and get some more cycling bloomers made.