Asher.  I don’t worry you with business matters.

Augusta.  Because you do not regard me as your intellectual equal.

Asher.  A woman has her sphere.  You have always filled it admirably.

Augusta.  “Adorn” is the word, I believe.

Asher.  To hear you talk, one would think you’d been contaminated by
Jonathan.  You, of all people!

Augusta.  There seems to be no place for a woman like me in these days,
—­I don’t recognize the world I’m living in.

Asher.  You didn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking of George.

Augusta.  I’ve given up all hope of ever seeing him again alive.

   (Enter Dr. Jonathan, lower right.  His calmness is in contrast to
   the storm, and to the mental states of Asher and Augusta.)

Why, Jonathan, what are you doing out in this storm?

Dr. Jonathan.  I came to see you, Augusta.

Augusta (knitting, trying to hide her perturbation at his appearance).  Did you?  You might have waited until the worst was over.  You still have to be careful of your health, you know.

Dr. Jonathan (sitting down).  There are other things more important than my health.  No later news about George, I suppose.

Asher.  Yes.  I got another telegram early this morning saying that he is on his way home on a transport.

Dr. Jonathan.  On his way home!

Asher.  If he lives to arrive.  I’ll show you the wire.  Apparently they can’t make anything out of his condition, but think it’s shell shock.  This storm has been raging along the coast ever since nine o’clock, the wires are down, but I did manage to telephone to New York and get hold of Frye, the shell-shock specialist.  In case George should land today, he’ll meet him.

Dr. Jonathan.  Frye is a good man.

Asher.  George is hit by a shell and almost killed nearly a month ago, and not a word do I hear of it until I get that message in your house yesterday!  Then comes this other telegram this morning.  What’s to be said about a government capable of such inefficiency?  Of course the chances of his landing today are small, but I can’t leave for New York until tonight because that same government sends a labour investigator here to pry into my affairs, and make a preliminary report.  They’re going to decide whether or not I shall keep my property or hand it over to them!  And whom do they send?  Not a business man, who’s had practical experience with labour, but a professor out of some university,—­a theorist!

Dr. Jonathan.  Awkward people, these professors.  But what would you do about it, Asher?  Wall up the universities?

Asher.  Their trustees, who are business men, should forbid professors meddling in government and politics.  This fellow had the impudence to tell me to my face that my own workmen, whom I am paying, aren’t working for me.  I’m only supposed to be supplying the capital.  We talk about Germany being an autocracy it’s nothing to what this country has become!