Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/253

. You are a gay deceiver. Do you know, I suspect your hair and mustache…

. No, upon my word of honor! A shampoo, a shampoo!

. The hair-dresser's art has made rapid progress. I wish you would teach me the secret. If that color were natural, it would be an insult.

. Would you really like to see me old?

. So old that no woman would ever look at you again, so ugly that they would all laugh when you attempted to presume. Then at last I could say: He is mine, thank God, all mine!

. But whose am I? What other woman has ever been able to call me hers, before God and before man, and in my own heart? Only you, my Isabel!

. You don't know how I love you, nor how you make me suffer!

. Applause! Bravo! Bravo!

. Hello!

. Why, María Antonia!

. Isabel…

. But we interrupt. Go on, go on!

. We were setting you an example, which, needless to say, was unpremeditated, as we did not see you coming. You surprised us, as it were, although these little episodes are not unusual with us, otherwise it would have been surprising had you happened on one of them. My dears, unless a man is married, unless he has children, he does not know what true love means, absolutely he does not. This is happiness. There is nothing else like it.

. Papa is in fine humor.