HELEN. And Tubby will try to bully me, I suppose. But I won't do it--no matter what he says!

THE AGENT. Pardon what may seem an impertinence, Miss; but is it really true that you don't want to marry this young man?

HELEN. (_flaming_) I suppose because you saw me in his arms--! Oh, I want to, all right, but--

THE AGENT. (_mildly_) Then what seems to be the trouble?

HELEN. I--oh, you explain to him, George.

_She goes to the bench and sits down_.

GEORGE. Well, it's this way. As you may have deduced from what you saw, we are madly in love with each other--

HELEN. (_from the bench_) But I'm not madly in love with munic.i.p.al ownership. That's the chief difficulty.

GEORGE. No, the chief difficulty is that I refuse to entertain even a platonic affection for the tango.

HELEN. (_irritably_) I told you the tango had gone out long ago!

GEORGE. Well, then, the maxixe.

HELEN. Stupid!

GEORGE. And there you have it! No doubt it seems ridiculous to you.

THE AGENT. (_gravely_) Not at all, my boy. I've known marriage to go to smash on far less than that. When you come to think of it, a taste for dancing and a taste for munic.i.p.al ownership stand at the two ends of the earth away from each other. They represent two different ways of taking life. And if two people who live in the same house can't agree on those two things, they'd disagree on a hundred things that came up every day. And what's the use for two different kinds of beings to try to live together? It doesn't work, no matter how much, love there is between them.

GEORGE. (_rushing up to him in surprise and gratification, and shaking his hand warmly_) Then you're on our side! You'll help us not to get married!

THE AGENT. Your aunt is very set on it--and your uncle, too, Miss!

HELEN. We must find some way to get out of it, or they'll have us cooped up together in that house before we know it. (_Rising and coming over to the Agent_) Can't you think up some scheme?

THE AGENT. Perhaps I can, and perhaps I can't. I'm a bachelor myself, Miss, and that means that I've thought up many a scheme to get out of marriage myself.

HELEN. (_outraged_) You old scoundrel!

THE AGENT. Oh, it's not so bad as you may think, Miss. I've always gone through the marriage ceremony to please them. But that's not what I call marriage.

GEORGE. Then what _do_ you call marriage?

HELEN. Yes, I'd like to know!

THE AGENT. Marriage, my young friends, is an iniquitous arrangement devised by the Devil himself for driving all the love out of the hearts of lovers. They start out as much in love with each other as you two are today, and they end by being as sick of the sight of each other as you two will be five years hence if I don't find a way of saving you alive out of the Devil's own trap. It's not lack of love that's the trouble with marriage--it's marriage itself. And when I say marriage, I don't mean promising to love, honour, and obey, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health till death do you part--that's only human nature to wish and to attempt. And it might be done if it weren't for the iniquitous arrangement of marriage.

GEORGE. (_puzzled_) But what is the iniquitous arrangement?

THE AGENT. Ah, that's the trouble! If I tell you, you won't believe me.

You'll go ahead and try it out, and find out what all the unhappy ones have found out before you. Listen to me, my children. Did you ever go on a picnic? (_He looks from one to the other--they stand astonished and silent_.) Of course you have. Every one has. There is an instinct in us which makes us go back to the ways of our savage ancestors--to gather about a fire in the forest, to cook meat on a pointed stick, and eat it with our fingers. But how many books would you write, young man, if you had to go back to the campfire every day for your lunch? And how many new dances would _you_ invent if you lived eternally in the picnic stage of civilization? No! the picnic is incompatible with everyday living. As incompatible as marriage.

GEORGE. But--

HELEN. But--

THE AGENT. Marriage is the nest-building instinct, turned by the Devil himself into an inst.i.tution to hold the human soul in chains. The whole story of marriage is told in the old riddle: "Why do birds in their nests agree? Because if they don't, they'll fall out." That's it.

Marriage is a nest so small that there is no room in it for disagreement. Now it may be all right for birds to agree, but human beings are not built that way. They disagree, and home becomes a little h.e.l.l. Or else they do agree, at the expense of the soul's freedom stifled in one or both.

HELEN. Yes, but tell me--

GEORGE. Ssh!

THE AGENT. Yet there _is_ the nest-building instinct. You feel it, both of you. If you don't now, you will as soon as you are married. If you are fools, you will try to live all your lives in a love-nest; and you will imprison your souls within it, and the Devil will laugh.

HELEN. (_to George_) I am beginning to be afraid of him.

GEORGE. So am I.

THE AGENT. If you are wise, you will build yourselves a little nest secretly in the woods, away from civilization, and you will run away together to that nest whenever you are in the mood. A nest so small that it will hold only two beings and one thought--the thought of love.

And then you will come back refreshed to civilization, where every soul is different from every other soul--you will let each other alone, forget each other, and do your own work in peace. Do you understand?

HELEN. He means we should occupy separate sides of the house, I think.

Or else that we should live apart and only see each other on week-ends.

I'm not sure which.

THE AGENT. (_pa.s.sionately_) I mean that you should not stifle love with civilization, nor enc.u.mber civilization with love. What have they to do with each other? You think you want a fellow student of economics. You are wrong. _You_ think you want a dancing partner.

You are mistaken. You want a revelation of the glory of the universe.

HELEN. (_to George, confidentially_) It's blithering nonsense, of course. But it _was_ something like that--a while ago.

GEORGE. (_bewilderedly_) Yes; when we knew it was our first kiss and thought it was to be our last.

THE AGENT. (_fiercely_) A kiss is always the first kiss and the last--or it is nothing.

HELEN. (_conclusively_) He's quite mad.

GEORGE. Absolutely.

THE AGENT. Mad? Of course I am mad. But--

_He turns suddenly, and subsides as a man in a, guard's uniform enters_.

THE GUARD. Ah, here you are! Thought you'd given us the slip, did you?

(_To the others_) Escaped from the Asylum, he did, a week ago, and got a job here. We've been huntin' him high and low. Come along now!

GEORGE. (_recovering with difficulty the power of speech_) What--what's the matter with him?

THE GUARD. Matter with him? He went crazy, he did, readin' the works of Bernard Shaw. And if he wasn't in the insane asylum he'd be in jail.

He's a bigamist, he is. He married fourteen women. But none of 'em would go on the witness stand against him. Said he was an ideal husband, they did. Fourteen of 'em! But otherwise he's perfectly harmless.