STREPHON.  You are a ghastly lot, you ancients.  I shall kill myself when I am four years old.  What do you live for?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  You will find out when you grow up.  You will not kill yourself.

STREPHON.  If you make me believe that, I shall kill myself now.

THE NEWLY BORN.  Oh no.  I want you.  I love you.

STREPHON.  I love someone else.  And she has gone old, old.  Lost to me for ever.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  How old?

STREPHON.  You saw her when you barged into us as we were dancing.  She is four.

THE NEWLY BORN.  How I should have hated her twenty minutes ago!  But I have grown out of that now.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Good.  That hatred is called jealousy, the worst of our childish complaints.

Martellus, dusting his hands and puffing, returns from the grove.

MARTELLUS.  Ouf! [He sits down next the Newly Born] That job’s finished.

ARJILLAX.  Ancients:  I should like to make a few studies of you.  Not portraits, of course:  I shall idealize you a little.  I have come to the conclusion that you ancients are the most interesting subjects after all.

MARTELLUS.  What!  Have those two horrors, whose ashes I have just deposited with peculiar pleasure in poor Pygmalion’s dustbin, not cured you of this silly image-making!

ARJILLAX.  Why did you model them as young things, you fool?  If Pygmalion had come to me, I should have made ancients of them for him.  Not that I should have modelled them any better.  I have always said that no one can beat you at your best as far as handwork is concerned.  But this job required brains.  That is where I should have come in.

MARTELLUS.  Well, my brainy boy, you are welcome to try your hand.  There are two of Pygmalion’s pupils at the laboratory who helped him to manufacture the bones and tissues and all the rest of it.  They can turn out a couple of new automatons; and you can model them as ancients if this venerable pair will sit for you.

ECRASIA [decisively] No.  No more automata.  They are too disgusting.

ACIS [returning from the temple] Well, thats done.  Poor old Pyg!

ECRASIA.  Only fancy, Acis!  Arjillax wants to make more of those abominable things, and to destroy even their artistic character by making ancients of them.

THE NEWLY BORN.  You wont sit for them, will you?  Please dont.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Children, listen.

ACIS [striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next Ecrasia] What!  Even the Ancient wants to make a speech!  Give it mouth, O Sage.

STREPHON.  For heaven’s sake don’t tell us that the earth was once inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras.  Life is hard enough for us as it is.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage:  it can be delightful.  What I wanted to tell you is that ever since men existed, children have played with dolls.