floors are washed by the rain and dried by
the sun, where the south wind dusts the beautiful green and purple
carpets. Or a chariot--to carry us up into the sky, where the lamps are
stars, and don't need to be filled with paraffin oil every day.

MORELL (harshly). And where there is nothing to do but to be idle,
selfish and useless.

CANDIDA (jarred). Oh, James, how could you spoil it all!

MARCHBANKS (firing up). Yes, to be idle, selfish and useless: that is
to be beautiful and free and happy: hasn't every man desired that with
all his soul for the woman he loves? That's my ideal: what's yours, and
that of all the dreadful people who live in these hideous rows of
houses? Sermons and scrubbing brushes! With you to preach the sermon
and your wife to scrub.

CANDIDA (quaintly). He cleans the boots, Eugene. You will have to clean
them to-morrow for saying that about him.

MARCHBANKS. Oh! don't talk about boots. Your feet should be beautiful
on the mountains.

CANDIDA. My feet would not be beautiful on the Hackney Road without
boots.

BURGESS (scandalized). Come, Candy, don't be vulgar. Mr. Morchbanks
ain't accustomed to it. You're givin' him the 'orrors again. I mean the
poetic ones.

(Morell is silent. Apparently he is busy with his letters: really he is
puzzling with misgiving over his new and alarming experience that the
surer he is of his moral thrusts, the more swiftly and effectively
Eugene parries them. To find himself beginning to fear a man whom he
does not respect affects him bitterly.)

(Miss Garnett comes in with a telegram.)

PROSERPINE (handing the telegram to Morell). Reply paid. The boy's
waiting. (To Candida, coming back to her machine and sitting down.)
Maria is ready for you now in the kitchen, Mrs. Morell. (Candida
rises.) The onions have come.

MARCHBANKS (convulsively). Onions!

CANDIDA. Yes, onions. Not even Spanish ones--nasty little red onions.
You shall help me to slice them. Come along.

(She catches him by the wrist and runs out, pulling him after her.
Burgess rises in consternation, and stands aghast on the hearth-rug,
staring after them.)

BURGESS. Candy didn't oughter 'andle a peer's nevvy like that. It's
goin' too fur with it. Lookee 'ere, James: do 'e often git taken queer
like that?

MORELL (shortly, writing a telegram). I don't know.

BURGESS (sentimentally). He talks very pretty. I allus had a turn for a
bit of potery. Candy takes arter me that-a-way: huse ter make