GERALD.  It might clear the way—­and it might block the way for ever:  depends what comes through.  But, sincerely, I don’t think they’ve got it in them.

ANABEL.  They may have something better.

GERALD.  That suggestion doesn’t interest me, Anabel.  Ah, well, we shall see what we shall see.  Have a whisky and soda with me, Oliver, and let the troubled course of this evening run to a smooth close.  It’s quite like old times.  Aren’t you smoking, Anabel?

ANABEL.  No, thanks.

GERALD.  I believe you’re a reformed character.  So it won’t be like old times, after all.

ANABEL.  I don’t want old times.  I want new ones.

GERALD.  Wait till Job Arthur has risen like Anti-christ, and proclaimed the resurrection of the gods.—­Do you see Job Arthur proclaiming Dionysos and Aphrodite?

ANABEL.  It bores me.  I don’t like your mood.  Good night.

GERALD.  Oh, don’t go.

ANABEL.  Yes, good night. (Exit.)

OLIVER.  She’s NOT reformed, Gerald.  She’s the same old moral character—­moral to the last bit of her, really—­as she always was.

GERALD.  Is that what it is?—­But one must be moral.

OLIVER.  Oh, yes.  Oliver Cromwell wasn’t as moral as Anabel is—­nor such an iconoclast.

GERALD.  Poor old Anabel!

OLIVER.  How she hates the dark gods!

GERALD.  And yet they cast a spell over her.  Poor old Anabel!  Well,
Oliver, is Bacchus the father of whisky?

OLIVER.  I don’t know.—­I don’t like you either.  You seem to smile all over yourself.  It’s objectionable.  Good night.

GERALD.  Oh, look here, this is censorious.

OLIVER.  You smile to yourself. (Exit.)

(Curtain.)

ACT III

SCENE I

  An old park.  Early evening.  In the background a low Georgian
  hall, which has been turned into offices for the Company, shows
  windows already lighted.  GERALD and ANABEL walk along the path.

ANABEL.  How beautiful this old park is!

GERALD.  Yes, it is beautiful—­seems so far away from everywhere, if one doesn’t remember that the hall is turned into offices.—­No one has lived here since I was a little boy.  I remember going to a Christmas party at the Walsalls’.

ANABEL.  Has it been shut up so long?

GERALD.  The Walsalls didn’t like it—­too near the ugliness.  They were county, you know—­we never were:  father never gave mother a chance, there.  And besides, the place is damp, cellars full of water.

ANABEL.  Even now?

GERALD.  No, not now—­they’ve been drained.  But the place would be too damp for a dwelling-house.  It’s all right as offices.  They burn enormous fires.  The rooms are quite charming.  This is what happens to the stately homes of England—­they buzz with inky clerks, or their equivalent.  Stateliness is on its last legs.