THE HE-ANCIENT.  Yet I have seen you walking over the mountains alone.  Have you not found your best friend in yourself?

ACIS.  What are you driving at, old one?  What does all this lead to?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  It leads, young man, to the truth that you can create nothing but yourself.

ACIS [musing] I can create nothing but myself.  Ecrasia:  you are clever.  Do you understand it?  I don’t.

ECRASIA.  It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error.  What artist is as great as his own works?  He can create masterpieces; but he cannot improve the shape of his own nose.

ACIS.  There!  What have you to say to that, old one?

THE HE-ANCIENT.  He can alter the shape of his own soul.  He could alter the shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a turned-down one were worth the effort.  One does not face the throes of creation for trifles.

ACIS.  What have you to say to that, Ecrasia?

ECRASIA.  I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance:  that it is indeed the only thing that matters.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  That is, they would understand something they could not believe, and that you do not believe.

ACIS.  Just so, mam.  Art is not honest:  that is why I never could stand much of it.  It is all make-believe.  Ecrasia never really says things:  she only rattles her teeth in her mouth.

ECRASIA.  Acis:  you are rude.

ACIS.  You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe.  Well, I don’t ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with you?

ECRASIA.  You have no right to say that I am not sincere.  I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me.  I am intensely in earnest about art.  There is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Yes, child:  art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures.  You use a glass mirror to see your face:  you use works of art to see your soul.  But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art.  We have a direct sense of life.  When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Yet we too have our toys and our dolls.  That is the trouble of the ancients.

ARJILLAX.  What!  The ancients have their troubles!  It is the first time I ever heard one of them confess it.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  Look at us.  Look at me.  This is my body, my blood, my brain; but it is not me.  I am the eternal life, the perpetual resurrection; but [striking his body] this structure, this organism, this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is held back from dissolution only by my use of it.  Worse still, it can be broken by a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed by a flash from the clouds.  Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.