Liza.  That’s not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at the writing-table in tears].

Higgins.  It’s all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot.  If you’re going to be a lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don’t spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes.  If you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter.  Work til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep.  Oh, it’s a fine life, the life of the gutter.  It’s real:  it’s warm:  it’s violent:  you can feel it through the thickest skin:  you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work.  Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art.  You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you?  Very well:  be off with you to the sort of people you like.  Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with.  If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

Liza [desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant.  I can’t talk to you:  you turn everything against me:  I’m always in the wrong.  But you know very well all the time that you’re nothing but a bully.  You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel.  You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.  You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father’s.  But don’t you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down.  I’ll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he’s able to support me.

Higgins [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador.  You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen.  I’m not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.

Liza.  You think I like you to say that.  But I haven’t forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won’t be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy.  If I can’t have kindness, I’ll have independence.

Higgins.  Independence?  That’s middle class blasphemy.  We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Liza [rising determinedly] I’ll let you see whether I’m dependent on you.  If you can preach, I can teach.  I’ll go and be a teacher.

Higgins.  What’ll you teach, in heaven’s name?

Liza.  What you taught me.  I’ll teach phonetics.

Higgins.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!

Liza.  I’ll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.

Higgins [rising in a fury] What!  That impostor! that humbug! that toadying ignoramus!  Teach him my methods! my discoveries!  You take one step in his direction and I’ll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her].  Do you hear?