THE SHE-ANCIENT.  So you think.

THE NEWLY BORN.  I don’t think:  I know.  I shall enjoy life for ever and ever.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  If you should turn out to be a person of infinite capacity, you will no doubt find life infinitely interesting.  However, all you have to do now is to play with your companions.  They have many pretty toys, as you see:  a playhouse, pictures, images, flowers, bright fabrics, music:  above all, themselves; for the most amusing child’s toy is another child.  At the end of four years, your mind will change:  you will become wise; and then you will be entrusted with power.

THE NEWLY BORN.  But I want power now.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  No doubt you do; so that you could play with the world by tearing it to pieces.

THE NEWLY BORN.  Only to see how it is made.  I should put it all together again much better than before.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  There was a time when children were given the world to play with because they promised to improve it.  They did not improve it; and they would have wrecked it had their power been as great as that which you will wield when you are no longer a child.  Until then your young companions will instruct you in whatever is necessary.  You are not forbidden to speak to the ancients; but you had better not do so, as most of them have long ago exhausted all the interest there is in observing children and conversing with them. [She turns to go].

THE NEWLY BORN.  Wait.  Tell me some things that I ought to do and ought not to do.  I feel the need of education.  They all laugh at her, except the She-Ancient.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  You will have grown out of that by tomorrow.  Do what you please. [She goes away up the hill path].

The officials take their paraphernalia and the fragments of the egg back into the temple.

ACIS.  Just fancy:  that old girl has been going for seven hundred years and hasnt had her fatal accident yet; and she is not a bit tired of it all.

THE NEWLY BORN.  How could anyone ever get tired of life?

ACIS.  They do.  That is, of the same life.  They manage to change themselves in a wonderful way.  You meet them sometimes with a lot of extra heads and arms and legs:  they make you split laughing at them.  Most of them have forgotten how to speak:  the ones that attend to us have to brush up their knowledge of the language once a year or so.  Nothing makes any difference to them that I can see.  They never enjoy themselves.  I don’t know how they can stand it.  They don’t even come to our festivals of the arts.  That old one who saw you out of your shell has gone off to moodle about doing nothing; though she knows that this is Festival Day?

THE NEWLY BORN.  What is Festival Day?

ACIS.  Two of our greatest sculptors are bringing us their latest masterpieces; and we are going to crown them with flowers and sing dithyrambs to them and dance round them.