MRS HUSHABYE [as he goes] It's no use.You'd really better-[but DUNN has vanished]. We had better all go out and look for some tea. We never have regular tea; but you can always get some when you want: the servants keep it stewing all day. The kitchen veranda is the best place to ask. May I show you? [ We had better all go out and look for some tea. We never have regular tea; but you can always get some when you want: the servants keep it stewing all day. The kitchen veranda is the best place to ask. May I show you? [She goes to the starboard door.

RANDALL [going with her] Thank you, I don't think I'll take any tea this afternoon. But if you will show me the garden- MRS HUSHABYE There's nothing to see in the garden except papa's observatory, and a gravel pit with a cave where he keeps dynamite and things of that sort. However, it's pleasanter out of doors; so come along.

RANDALL Dynamite! Isn't that rather risky?

MRS HUSHABYE Well, we don't sit in the gravel pit when there's a thunderstorm.

LADY UTTERWORD That's something new. What is the dynamite for?

HECTOR To blow up the human race if it goes too far. He is trying to discover a psychic ray that will explode all the explosive at the will of a Mahatma.ks ELLIE The captain's tea is delicious, Mr Utterword.

MRS HUSHABYE [stopping in the doorway] Do you mean to say that you've had some of my father's tea? that you got round him before you were ten minutes in the house?

ELLIE I did.

MRS HUSHABYE You little devil! [She goes out with RANDALL.]

MANGAN Won't you come, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE I'm too tired. I'll take a book up to my room and rest a little. [She goes to the bookshelf.]

MANGAN Right. You can't do better. But I'm disappointed. [He follows RANDALL and MRS HUSHABYE.]

ELLIE, HECTOR, and LADY UTTERWORD are left. HECTOR is close to LADY UTTERWORD. They look at ELLIE, waiting for her to go.

ELLIE [looking at the title of a book] Do you like stories of adventure, Lady Utterword?

LADY UTTERWORD [patronizingly] Of course, dear.

ELLIE Then I'll leave you to Mr Hushabye. [She goes out through the hall.]

HECTOR That girl is mad about tales of adventure. The lies I have to tell her!

LADY UTTERWORD [not interested in ELLIE] When you saw me what did you mean by saying that you thought, and then stopping short? What did you think?

HECTOR [folding his arms and looking down at her magnetically] May I tell you?

LADY UTTERWORD Of course.

HECTOR It will not sound very civil. I was on the point of saying, "I thought you were a plain woman."

LADY UTTERWORD Oh, for shame, Hector! What right had you to notice whether I am plain or not?

HECTOR Listen to me, Ariadne. Until today I have seen only photographs of you; and no photograph can give the strange fascination of the daughters of that supernatural old man. There is some damnable quality in them that destroys men's moral sense, and carries them beyond honor and dishonor. You know that, don't you?

LADY UTTERWORD Perhaps I do, Hector. But let me warn you once for all that I am a rigidly conventional woman. You may think because I'm a Shotover that I'm a Bohemian, because we are all so horribly Bohemian. But I'm not. I hate and loathe Bohemianism. No child brought up in a strict Puritan household ever suffered from Puritanism as I suffered from our Bohemianism.

HECTOR Our children are like that. They spend their holidays in the houses of their respectable schoolfellows.

LADY UTTERWORD I shall invite them for Christmas.

HECTOR Their absence leaves us both without our natural chaperones.

LADY UTTERWORD Children are certainly very inconvenient sometimes. But intelligent people can always manage, unless they are Bohemians.

HECTOR You are no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your attraction is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count yourself?

LADY UTTERWORD I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct thing, you can do just what you like. An ill-conducted, careless woman gets simply no chance. An ill-conducted, careless man is never allowed within arm's length of any woman worth knowing.

HECTOR I see. You are neither a Bohemian woman nor a Puritan woman. You are a dangerous woman.

LADY UTTERWORD On the contrary, I am a safe woman.

HECTOR You are a most accursedly attractive woman. Mind, I am not making love to you. I do not like being attracted. But you had better know how I feel if you are going to stay here.

LADY UTTERWORD You are an exceedingly clever lady-killer, Hector. And terribly handsome. I am quite a good player, myself, at that game. Is it quite understood that we are only playing?

HECTOR Quite. I am deliberately playing the fool, out of sheer worthlessness.

LADY UTTERWORD [rising brightly] Well, you are my brother-in-law. Hesione asked you to kiss me. [He seizes her in his arms and kisses her strenuously.] Oh! that was a little more than play, brother-in-law. [She pushes him suddenly away.] You shall not do that again.

HECTOR In effect, you got your claws deeper into me than I intended.

MRS HUSHABYE [coming in from the garden] Don't let me disturb you; I only want a cap to put on daddiest. The sun is setting; and he'll catch cold [she makes for the door leading to the hall].

LADY UTTERWORD Your husband is quite charming, darling. He has actually condescended to kiss me at last. I shall go into the garden: it's cooler now [she goes out by the port door].

MRS HUSHABYE Take care, dear child. I don't believe any man can kiss Addy without falling in love with her. [She goes into the hall.]

HECTOR [striking himself on the chest] Fool! Goat!

MRS HUSHABYE comes back with the captain's cap.

HECTOR Your sister is an extremely enterprising old girl. Where's Miss Dunn!

MRS HUSHABYE Mangan says she has gone up to her room for a nap. Addy won't let you talk to Ellie: she has marked you for her own.

HECTOR She has the diabolical family fascination. I began making love to her automatically. What am I to do? I can't fall in love; and I can't hurt a woman's feelings by telling her so when she falls in love with me. And as women are always falling in love with my moustache I get landed in all sorts of tedious and terrifying flirtations in which I'm not a bit in earnest.

MRS HUSHABYE Oh, neither is Addy. She has never been in love in her life, though she has always been trying to fall in head over ears. She is worse than you, because you had one real go at least, with me.

HECTOR That was a confounded madness. I can't believe that such an amazing experience is common. It has left its mark on me. I believe that is why I have never been able to repeat it.

MRS HUSHABYE [laughing and caressing his arm] We were frightfully in love with one another, Hector. It was such an enchanting dream that I have never been able to grudge it to you or anyone else since. I have invited all sorts of pretty women to the house on the chance of giving you another turn. But it has never come off.

HECTOR I don't know that I want it to come off. It was damned dangerous. You fascinated me; but I loved you; so it was heaven. This sister of yours fascinates me; but I hate her; so it is hell. I shall kill her if she persists.

MRS HUSHABYE Nothing will kill Addy; she is as strong as a horse. [Releasing him.] Now I I am going off to fascinate somebody. am going off to fascinate somebody.

HECTOR The Foreign Office toff?kt Randall? Randall?

MRS HUSHABYE Goodness gracious, no! Why should I fascinate him?

HECTOR I presume you don't mean the bloated capitalist, Mangan?

MRS HUSHABYE Hm! I think he had better be fascinated by me than by Ellie. [She is going into the garden when the captain comes in from it with some sticks in his hand.] What have you got there, daddiest?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Dynamite.

MRS HUSHABYE You've been to the gravel pit. Don't drop it about the house, there's a dear. [She goes into the garden, where the evening light is now very red.]

HECTOR Listen, O sage. How long dare you concentrate on a feeling without risking having it fixed in your consciousness all the rest of your life?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Ninety minutes. An hour and a half. [He goes into the pantry. ] ]

HECTOR, left alone, contracts his brows, and falls into a day-dream. He does not move for some time. Then he folds his arms. Then, throwing his hands behind him, and gripping one with the other, he strides tragically once to and fro. Suddenly he snatches his walking-stick from the teak table, and draws it; for it is a sword-stick. He fights a desperate duel with an imaginary antagonist, and after many vicissitudes runs him through the body up to the hilt. He sheathes his sword and throws it on the sofa, falling into another reverie as he does so. He looks straight into the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her by the arms; and says in a deep and thrilling tone, "Do you love me!" The captain comes out of the pantry at this moment; and HECTOR, caught with his arms stretched out and his fists clenched, has to account for his attitude by going through a series of gymnastic exercises.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER That sort of strength is no good.You will never be as strong as a gorilla.

HECTOR What is the dynamite for?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER To kill fellows like Mangan.

HECTOR No use. They will always be able to buy more dynamite than you.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER I will make a dynamite that he cannot explode.

HECTOR And that you can, eh?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Yes: when I have attained the seventh degree of concentration.

HECTOR What's the use of that? You never do attain it.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER What then is to be done? Are we to be kept forever in the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing but a machine for greasing their bristles and filling their snouts?

HECTOR Are Mangan's bristles worse than Randall's love-locks? ku ku CAPTAIN SHOTOVER We must win powers of life and death over them both. I refuse to die until I have invented the means.

HECTOR Who are we that we should judge them?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER What are they that they should judge us? Yet they do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and their seed. They know it and act on it, strangling our souls. They believe in themselves. When we believe in ourselves, we shall kill them.

HECTOR It is the same seed.You forget that your pirate has a very nice daughter. Mangan's son may be a Plato: Randall's a Shelley. What was my father?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER The damndest scoundrel I ever met. [He replaces the drawing-board: sits down at the table; and begins to mix a wash of color.]

HECTOR Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent grand-children?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER They are mine also.

HECTOR Just so. We are members one of another. [He throws himself carelessly on the sofa.] I I tell you I have often thought of this killing of human vermin. Many men have thought of it. Decent men are like Daniel in the lion's den: their survival is a miracle; and they do not always survive. We live among the Mangans and Randalls and Billie Dunns as they, poor devils, live among the disease germs and the doctors and the lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant chefs and the tradesmen and the servants and all the rest of the parasites and blackmailers. What are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power to kill them; and I'll spare them in sheer- CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [cutting in sharply] Fellow feeling?

HECTOR No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them in simple magnanimous pity.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER You can't spare them until you have the power to kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There are millions of blacks over the water for them to train and let loose on us. They're going to do it. They're doing it already.

HECTOR They are too stupid to use their power. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [throwing down his brush and coming to the end of the sofa] Do not deceive yourself: they do use it. We kill the better half of ourselves every day to propitiate them. The knowledge that these people are there to render all our aspirations barren prevents us having the aspirations. And when we are tempted to seek their destruction they bring forth demons to delude us, disguised as pretty daughters, and singers and poets and the like, for whose sake we spare them.

HECTOR [sitting up and leaning towards him] May not Hesione be such a demon, brought forth by you lest I should slay you? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER That is possible. She has used you up, and left you nothing but dreams, as some women do. HECTOR Vampire women, demon women.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Men think the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry.] I must think these things out. [Turning suddenly.] But I go on with the dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind ray that will explode the ammunition in the belt of my adversary before he can point his gun at me. And I must hurry. I am old: I have no time to waste in talk [he is about to go into the pantry, and HECTOR is making for the hall, when HESIONE comes back].

MRS HUSHABYE Daddiest, you and Hector must come and help me to entertain all these people. What on earth were you shouting about?

HECTOR [stopping in the act of turning the door handle] He is madder than usual.

MRS HUSHABYE We all are.

HECTOR I must change [he resumes his door opening].

MRS HUSHABYE Stop, stop. Come back, both of you. Come back. [They return, reluctantly.] Money is running short.

HECTOR Money! Where are my April dividends?

MRS HUSHABYE Where is the snow that fell last year?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Where is all the money you had for that patent lifeboat I invented?

MRS HUSHABYE Five hundred pounds; and I have made it last since Easter!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Since Easter! Barely four months! Monstrous extravagance! I could live for seven years on 500.

MRS HUSHABYE Not keeping open house as we do here, daddiest.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Only 500 for that lifeboat! I got twelve thousand for the invention before that.

MRS HUSHABYE Yes, dear; but that was for the ship with the magnetic keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we do, you cannot afford life-saving inventions. Can't you think of something that will murder half Europe at one bang?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband invent something? He does nothing but tell lies to women.

HECTOR Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However, you are right: I ought to support my wife.

MRS HUSHABYE Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort: I should never see you from breakfast to dinner. I want my husband.

HECTOR [bitterly] I might as well be your lapdog.

MRS HUSHABYE Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other poor husbands?

HECTOR No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is anyhow!