BURGE-LUBIN.  Oh, tut tut!  Come, come!  Pull yourself together.  How can you, a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still remembered by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd?

BARNABAS.  You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass.  I am going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if you shew the slightest sign of weakness about it.

CONFUCIUS [very impressively] You will regret it if you do.

BARNABAS.  What is to make me regret it?

CONFUCIUS.  Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to count on living for three centuries.  Things will happen which you do not foresee:  terrible things.  The family will dissolve:  parents and children will be no longer the old and the young:  brothers and sisters will meet as strangers after a hundred years separation:  the ties of blood will lose their innocence.  The imaginations of men, let loose over the possibilities of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck human society.  This discovery must be kept a dead secret. [He sits down].

BARNABAS.  And if I refuse to keep the secret?

CONFUCIUS.  I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you blab.

BARNABAS.  You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my statement.

CONFUCIUS.  So can I. Which of us do you think he will support when I explain to him that your object in revealing his age is to get him killed?

BARNABAS [desperate] Burge:  are you going to back up this yellow abomination against me?  Are we public men and members of the Government? or are we damned blackguards?

CONFUCIUS [unmoved] Have you ever known a public man who was not what vituperative people called a damned blackguard when some inconsiderate person wanted to tell the public more than was good for it?

BARNABAS.  Hold your tongue, you insolent heathen.  Burge:  I spoke to you.

BURGE-LUBIN.  Well, you know, my dear Barnabas, Confucius is a very long-headed chap.  I see his point.

BARNABAS.  Do you?  Then let me tell you that, except officially, I will never speak to you again.  Do you hear?

BURGE-LUBIN [cheerfully] You will.  You will.

BARNABAS.  And don’t you ever dare speak to me again.  Do you hear? [He turns to the door].

BURGE-LUBIN.  I will.  I will.  Goodbye, Barnabas.  God bless you.

BARNABAS.  May you live forever, and be the laughingstock of the whole world! [he dashes out in a fury].

BURGE-LUBIN [laughing indulgently] He will keep the secret all right.  I know Barnabas.  You neednt worry.

CONFUCIUS [troubled and grave] There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves.  Consider.  There are those films at the Record Office.  We have no power to prevent the Master of the Records from publishing this discovery made in his department.  We cannot silence the American—­who can silence an American?—­nor the people who were there today to receive him.  Fortunately, a film can prove nothing but a resemblance.