flaming fraud if you
like.

HASLAM. Did you notice one thing? It struck me as rather curious.

SAVVY. What?

HASLAM. Lubin and your father have both survived the war. But their sons
were killed in it.

SAVVY [_sobered_] Yes. Jim's death killed mother.

HASLAM. And they never said a word about it!

SAVVY. Well, why should they? The subject didn't come up. _I_ forgot
about it too; and I was very fond of Jim.

HASLAM. _I_ didn't forget it, because I'm of military age; and if I
hadnt been a parson I'd have had to go out and be killed too. To me the
awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to
kill their own sons. It was the war casualty lists and the starvation
afterwards that finished me up with politics and the Church and
everything else except you.

SAVVY. Oh, I was just as bad as any of them. I sold flags in the streets
in my best clothes; and--hsh! [_she jumps up and pretends to be looking
for a book on the shelves behind the settee_].

_Franklyn and Conrad return, looking weary and glum._

CONRAD. Well, thats how the gospel of the brothers Barnabas is going to
be received! [_He drops into Burge's chair_].

FRANKLYN [_going back to his seat at the table_] It's no use. Were you
convinced, Mr Haslam?

HASLAM. About our being able to live three hundred years? Frankly no.

CONRAD [_to Savvy_] Nor you, I suppose?

SAVVY. Oh, I don't know. I thought I was for a moment. I can believe, in
a sort of way, that people might live for three hundred years. But when
you came down to tin tacks, and said that the parlor maid might, then I
saw how absurd it was.

FRANKLYN. Just so. We had better hold our tongues about it, Con. We
should only be laughed at, and lose the little credit we earned on false
pretences in the days of our ignorance.

CONRAD. I daresay. But Creative Evolution doesnt stop while people are
laughing. Laughing may even lubricate its job.

SAVVY. What does that mean?

CONRAD. It means that the first man to live three hundred years maynt
have the slightest notion that he is going to do it, and may be the
loudest laugher of the lot.

SAVVY. Or the first woman?

CONRAD [_assenting_] Or the first woman.

HASLAM. Well, it wont be one of us, anyhow.

FRANKLYN. How do you know?

_This is unanswerable. None of them have anything more to say._

PART III

The Thing Happens

_A summer afternoon in the year 2170 A.D. The official parlor of the
President of the Bri