BARNABAS.  You ought to have killed yourself.  As an honest man you were entitled to no more than an honest man’s expectation of life.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  I did kill myself.  It was quite easy.  I left a suit of clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the pockets to identify me.  I then turned up in a strange place, pretending that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or anything about myself.  Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my memory.  I have had several careers since I began this routine of life and death.  I have been an archbishop three times.  When I persuaded the authorities to knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the foundations, or move them, I went into the artillery, and became a general.  I have been President.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Dickenson?

THE ARCHBISHOP.  Yes.

BURGE-LUBIN.  But they found Dickenson’s body:  its ashes are buried in St
Paul’s.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  They almost always found the body.  During the bathing season there are plenty of bodies.  I have been cremated again and again.  At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett, from whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912.  But I got tired of that.  I would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph.

The Chief Secretary and the President look very glum.  Their incredulity is vanquished at last.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Look here.  Do you chaps realize how awful this is?  Here we are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by two centuries.  He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment.

BARNABAS.  Not he.  He’ll go on drawing his pension until the end of the world.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  Not quite that.  My expectation of life is only three hundred years.

BARNABAS.  You will last out my time anyhow:  that’s enough for me.

THE ARCHBISHOP [coolly] How do you know?

BARNABAS [taken aback] How do I know!

THE ARCHBISHOP.  Yes:  how do you know?  I did not begin even to suspect until I was nearly seventy.  I was only vain of my youthful appearance.  I was not quite serious about it until I was ninety.  Even now I am not sure from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason for thinking that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a lifetime of three hundred years.

BURGE-LUBIN.  But how do you do it?  Is it lemons?  Is it Soya beans?  Is it—­

THE ARCHBISHOP.  I do not do it.  It happens.  It may happen to anyone.  It may happen to you.

BURGE-LUBIN [the full significance of this for himself dawning on him] Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?

THE ARCHBISHOP.  You may.  Therefore I advise you to be very careful how you take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.