CONRAD.  Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events.

FRANKLYN.  Yes:  but it is too late.  She doesn’t trust me now.  She doesn’t talk about such things to me.  She doesnt read anything I write.  She never comes to hear me lecture.  I am out of it as far as Savvy is concerned. [He resumes his seat at the writing-table].

CONRAD.  I must have a talk to her.

FRANKLYN.  Perhaps she will listen to you.  You are not her father.

CONRAD.  I sent her my last book.  I can break the ice by asking her what she made of it.

FRANKLYN.  When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands.  She hasnt read a word of it.

CONRAD [rising indignantly] What!

FRANKLYN [inexorably] Not a word of it.

CONRAD [beaten] Well, I suppose it’s only natural.  Biology is a dry subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger.

[He sits down again resignedly].

FRANKLYN.  Brother:  if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a delusion.  Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [The parlor maid returns.  Franklyn is impatient at the interruption].  Well? what is it now?

THE PARLOR MAID.  Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir.  He wants to speak to you.

FRANKLYN [astonished] Mr Joyce Burge!

THE PARLOR MAID.  Yes, sir.

FRANKLYN [to Conrad] What on earth does this mean?  I havnt heard from him nor exchanged a word with him for years.  I resigned the chairmanship of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party politics from my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition.  Of course, he dropped me like a hot potato.

CONRAD.  Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to pick you up again.

THE PARLOR MAID [warningly] He is holding the line, sir.

FRANKLYN.  Yes:  all right [he hurries out].

The parlor maid goes to the hearthrug to make up the fire.  Conrad rises and strolls to the middle of the room, where he stops and looks quizzically down at her.

CONRAD.  So you have only one life to live, eh?

THE PARLOR MAID [dropping on her knees in consternation] I meant no offence, sir.

CONRAD.  You didn’t give any.  But you know you could live a devil of a long life if you really wanted to.