FRANKLYN.  We don’t know where or when or to whom it will happen.  It may happen first to someone in this room.

HASLAM.  It wont happen to me:  thats jolly sure.

CONRAD.  It might happen to anyone.  It might happen to the parlor maid. 
How do we know?

SAVVY.  The parlor maid!  Oh, thats nonsense, Nunk.

LUBIN [once more quite comfortable] I think Miss Savvy has delivered the final verdict.

BURGE.  Do you mean to say that you have nothing more practical to offer than the mere wish to live longer?  Why, if people could live by merely wishing to, we should all be living for ever already!  Everybody would like to live for ever.  Why don’t they?

CONRAD.  Pshaw!  Everybody would like to have a million of money.  Why havnt they?  Because the men who would like to be millionaires wont save sixpence even with the chance of starvation staring them in the face.  The men who want to live for ever wont cut off a glass of beer or a pipe of tobacco, though they believe the teetotallers and non-smokers live longer.  That sort of liking is not willing.  See what they do when they know they must.

FRANKLYN.  Do not mistake mere idle fancies for the tremendous miracle-working force of Will nerved to creation by a conviction of Necessity.  I tell you men capable of such willing, and realizing its necessity, will do it reluctantly, under inner compulsion, as all great efforts are made.  They will hide what they are doing from themselves:  they will take care not to know what they are doing.  They will live three hundred years, not because they would like to, but because the soul deep down in them will know that they must, if the world is to be saved.

LUBIN [turning to Franklyn and patting him almost paternally] Well, my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of the millennium.  I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are much the most interesting.  I am conscious of a very curious mixture of relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all moonshine, and that you have nothing practical to offer us.  But what a pity!  It is such a fascinating idea!  I think you are too hard on us practical men; but there are men in every Government, even on the Front Bench, who deserve all you say.  And now, before dropping the subject, may I put just one question to you?  An idle question, since nothing can come of it; but still—­

FRANKLYN.  Ask your question.

LUBIN.  Why do you fix three hundred years as the exact figure?

FRANKLYN.  Because we must fix some figure.  Less would not be enough; and more would be more than we dare as yet face.

LUBIN.  Pooh!  I am quite prepared to face three thousand, not to say three million.

CONRAD.  Yes, because you don’t believe you Will be called on to make good your word.