, opens it noiselessly, and passes through,
but it clicks as she shuts it.]

CHLOE. [Starting violently] Oh-h!

[He comes to her.]

CHARLES. What is it? What is it? You are nervy, my dear.

CHLOE. [Looking round with a little laugh] I don't know. Go on,
Charlie. I'll be all right when this head's gone.

CHARLES. [Stroking her forehead and, looking at her doubtfully]
You go to bed; I won't be late coming up.

[He turn, and goes, blowing a kiss from the doorway. When he
is gone, CHLOE gets up and stands in precisely the attitude in
which she stood at the beginning of the Act, thinking, and
thinking. And the door is opened, and the face of the MAID
peers round at her.]

CURTAIN

ACT III

SCENE I

HILLCRIST'S study next morning.

JILL coming from Left, looks in at the open French window.

JILL. [Speaking to ROLF, invisible] Come in here. There's no one.

[She goes in. ROLF joins her, coming from the garden.]

ROLF. Jill, I just wanted to say--Need we?

[JILL. nodes.]

Seeing you yesterday--it did seem rotten.

JILL. We didn't begin it.

ROLF. No; but you don't understand. If you'd made yourself, as
father has----

JILL. I hope I should be sorry.

ROLF. [Reproachfully] That isn't like you. Really he can't help
thinking he's a public benefactor.

JILL. And we can't help thinking he's a pig. Sorry!

ROLF. If the survival of the fittest is right----

JILL. He may be fitter, but he's not going to survive.

ROLF. [Distracted] It looks like it, though.

JILL. Is that all you came to say?

ROLF. Suppose we joined, couldn't we stop it?

JILL. I don't feel like joining.

ROLF. We did shake hands.

JILL. One can't fight and not grow bitter.

ROLF. I don't feel bitter.

JILL. Wait; you'll feel it soon enough.

ROLF. Why? [Attentively] About Chloe? I do think your mother's
manner to her is----

JILL. Well?

ROLF. Snobbish. [JILL laughs.]
She may not be your class; and that's just why it's
snobbish.

JILL. I think you'd better shut up.

ROLF. What my father said was true; your mother's rudeness to her
that day she came here, has made both him and Charlie ever so much
more bitter.

[JILL whistles the Habanera from "Carmen."]

[Staring at her, rather angrily]

Is it a whistling matter?

JILL. No.

ROLF. I suppose you want me to go