Zechariah set his glass down and took one of Dr. Well’s hands between both of his.

“All this time, I thought I needed a man more clever, more accomplished, better than I to avoid the mistakes of the past. But what does that accomplish?” There was such a look of relief on his face as he talked on. “I end up entertaining some unlanded doctor, so busy trying to one-up an unlanded lawyer that he flew on by the point I would have gladly undressed him and ravaged him on the settee, straight into the miserable complacency of matrimonial couplehood that men like us are spared!”

He took the briefest of moments to take his own hands back, shake his head, and marvel at his own genius .. and then he was right back on.

“You are a beautiful man, brilliant man! I thought I could love you! Now all I can imagine is your daily work of pulling cork after tedious cork out of stupid men’s arses! Better men’s arses! Men who are too dumb and too poor to marvel at more than you already have!”

He gestured widely, convinced Dr. Wells had the exact same wanted-a-smart-man-because-the-dumb-lover-got-hung problems as him.

“Oscar Wilde is on trial for a man who was. Not. Worth it!”