Come! you wouldn’t refuse the acquaintance of my mother’s cousin the Duke of Belgravia because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways.  You wouldn’t cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among their tenants.  Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham?  Well, that was founded by my brother the M.P.  He gets his 22 per cent out of a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on.  How d’ye suppose they manage when they have no family to fall back on?  Ask your mother.  And do you expect me to turn my back on 35 per cent when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible men?  No such fool!  If youre going to pick and choose your acquaintances on moral principles, youd better clear out of this country, unless you want to cut yourself out of all decent society.

VIVIE [conscience stricken] You might go on to point out that I myself never asked where the money I spent came from.  I believe I am just as bad as you.

CROFTS [greatly reassured] Of course you are; and a very good thing too!  What harm does it do after all? [Rallying her jocularly] So you don’t think me such a scoundrel now you come to think it over.  Eh?

VIVIE.  I have shared profits with you:  and I admitted you just now to the familiarity of knowing what I think of you.

CROFTS [with serious friendliness] To be sure you did.  You won’t find me a bad sort:  I don’t go in for being superfine intellectually; but Ive plenty of honest human feeling; and the old Crofts breed comes out in a sort of instinctive hatred of anything low, in which I’m sure youll sympathize with me.  Believe me, Miss Vivie, the world isn’t such a bad place as the croakers make out.  As long as you don’t fly openly in the face of society, society doesn’t ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do.  There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.  In the class of people I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mothers.  No man can offer you a safer position.

VIVIE [studying him curiously] I suppose you really think youre getting on famously with me.

CROFTS.  Well, I hope I may flatter myself that you think better of me than you did at first.

VIVIE [quietly] I hardly find you worth thinking about at all now.  When I think of the society that tolerates you, and the laws that protect you! when I think of how helpless nine out of ten young girls would be in the hands of you and my mother! the unmentionable woman and her capitalist bully—­

CROFTS [livid] Damn you!

VIVIE.  You need not.  I feel among the damned already.

[She raises the latch of the gate to open it and go out.  He follows her and puts his hand heavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.]