a stupendous revelation, that anything short of a blow from a
sledge-hammer could produce the smallest impression on any of us?

MRS LUTESTRING. Well, you see, it has been so hard on me never to meet a
grown-up person. You are all such children. And I never was very fond of
children, except that one girl who woke up the mother passion in me. I
have been very lonely sometimes.

BURGE-LUBIN [_again gallant_] But surely, Mrs Lutestring, that has been
your own fault. If I may say so, a lady of your attractions need never
have been lonely.

MRS LUTESTRING. Why?

BURGE-LUBIN. Why! Well--. Well, er--. Well, er er--. Well! [_he gives it
up_].

THE ARCHBISHOP. He means that you might have married. Curious, how
little they understand our position.

MRS LUTESTRING. I did marry. I married again on my hundred and first
birthday. But of course I had to marry an elderly man: a man over sixty.
He was a great painter. On his deathbed he said to me 'It has taken me
fifty years to learn my trade, and to paint all the foolish pictures a
man must paint and get rid of before he comes through them to the
great things he ought to paint. And now that my foot is at last on the
threshold of the temple I find that it is also the threshold of my
tomb.' That man would have been the greatest painter of all time if he
could have lived as long as I. I saw him die of old age whilst he
was still, as he said himself, a gentleman amateur, like all modern