ECRASIA.  You keep using that word.  What are dolls, pray?

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  What you call works of art.  Images.  We call them dolls.

ARJILLAX.  Just so.  You have no sense of art; and you instinctively insult it.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Children have been known to make dolls out of rags, and to caress them with the deepest fondness.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Eight centuries ago, when I was a child, I made a rag doll.  The rag doll is the dearest of all.

THE NEWLY BORN [eagerly interested] Oh!  Have you got it still?

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  I kept it a full week.

ECRASIA.  Even in your childhood, then, you did not understand high art, and adored your own amateur crudities.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  How old are you?

ECRASIA.  Eight months.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  When you have lived as long as I have—­

ECRASIA [interrupting rudely] I shall worship rag dolls, perhaps. 
Thank heaven I am still in my prime.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  You are still capable of thanking, though you do not know what you thank.  You are a thanking little animal, a blaming little animal, a—­

ACIS.  A gushing little animal.

ARJILLAX.  And, as she thinks, an artistic little animal.

ECRASIA [nettled] I am an animated being with a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.  If your Automata had been properly animated, Martellus, they would have been more successful.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  That is where you are wrong, my child.  If those two loathsome things had been rag dolls, they would have been amusing and lovable.  The Newly Born here would have played with them; and you would all have laughed and played with them too until you had torn them to pieces; and then you would have laughed more than ever.

THE NEWLY BORN.  Of course we should.  Isnt that funny?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.

STREPHON.  Yes; and take all the fun out of it.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Do not be so embittered because your sweetheart has outgrown her love for you.  The Newly Born will make amends.

THE NEWLY BORN.  Oh yes:  I will be more than she could ever have been.

STREPHON.  Psha!  Jealous!

THE NEWLY BORN.  Oh no.  I have grown out of that.  I love her now because she loved you, and because you love her.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  That is the next stage.  You are getting on very nicely, my child.

MARTELLUS.  Come! what is the truth that was hidden in the rag doll?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Well, consider why you are not content with the rag doll, and must have something more closely resembling a real living creature.  As you grow up you make images and paint pictures.  Those of you who cannot do that make stories about imaginary dolls.  Or you dress yourselves up as dolls and act plays about them.