MRS LUTESTRING.  Yes:  that is it.  I could not have expressed it in words; but you have expressed it for me.  I felt, even when I was an ignorant domestic slave, that we had the possibility of becoming a great nation within us; but our faults and follies drove me to cynical hopelessness.  We all ended then like that.  It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.  I know now that it took me a whole century to grow up.  I began my serious life when I was a hundred and twenty.  Asiatics cannot control me:  I am not a child in their hands, as you are, Mr President.  Neither, I am sure, is the Archbishop.  They respect me.  You are not grown up enough even for that, though you were kind enough to say that I frighten you.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Honestly, you do.  And will you think me very rude if I say that if I must choose between a white woman old enough to be my great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find the black woman more sympathetic?

MRS LUTESTRING.  And more attractive in color, perhaps?

BURGE-LUBIN.  Yes.  Since you ask me, more—­well, not more attractive:  I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance—­but I will say, richer.  More Venetian.  Tropical.  ’The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.’

MRS LUTESTRING.  Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin already to talk about men with golden complexions.

CONFUCIUS [expanding into a smile all across both face and body] A-a-a-a-a-h!

BURGE-LUBIN.  Well, what of it, madam?  Have you read a very interesting book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the future of the world lies with the Mulatto?

MRS LUTESTRING [rising] Mr Archbishop:  if the white race is to be saved, our destiny is apparent.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  Yes:  our duty is pretty clear.

MRS LUTESTRING.  Have you time to come home with me and discuss the matter?

THE ARCHBISHOP [rising] With pleasure.

BARNABAS [rising also and rushing past Mrs Lutestring to the door, where he turns to bar her way] No you don’t.  Burge:  you understand, don’t you?

BURGE-LUBIN.  No.  What is it?

BARNABAS.  These two are going to marry.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Why shouldn’t they, if they want to?

BARNABAS.  They don’t want to.  They will do it in cold blood because their children will live three hundred years.  It mustnt be allowed.

CONFUCIUS.  You cannot prevent it.  There is no law that gives you power to interfere with them.

BARNABAS.  If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against marriages above the age of seventy-eight.

THE ARCHBISHOP.  There is not time for that before we are married, Mr Accountant General.  Be good enough to get out of the lady’s way.

BARNABAS.  There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before anything comes of your marriage.  Dont forget that.