his head slowly and repeatedly_]???

BURGE-LUBIN. You really think--? [_he hesitates_].

CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop has always been a puzzle to me. Ever since
I learnt to distinguish between one English face and another I have
noticed what the woman pointed out: that the English face is not an
adult face, just as the English mind is not an adult mind.

BURGE-LUBIN. Stow it, John Chinaman. If ever there was a race divinely
appointed to take charge of the non-adult races and guide them and train
them and keep them out of mischief until they grow up to be capable of
adopting our institutions, that race is the English race. It is the only
race in the world that has that characteristic. Now!

CONFUCIUS. That is the fancy of a child nursing a doll. But it is ten
times more childish of you to dispute the highest compliment ever paid
you.

BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.

CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy.
Your maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be
governed by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are
potentially the most highly developed race on earth, and would be
actually the greatest if you could live long enough to attain to
maturity.

BURGE-LUBIN [_grasping the idea at last_] By George, Confucius, youre
right! I never thought of that. That explains everything. We are just
a lot of schoolboys: theres no denying it. Talk to an Englishman about
anything serious, and he listens to you curiously for a moment just as
he listens to a chap playing classical music. Then he goes back to
his marine golf, or motoring, or flying, or women, just like a bit of
stretched elastic when you let it go. [_Soaring to the height of his
theme_] Oh, youre quite right. We are only in our infancy. I ought to
be in a perambulator, with a nurse shoving me along. It's true: it's
absolutely true. But some day we'll grow up; and then, by Jingo, we'll
shew em.

CONFUCIUS. The Archbishop is an adult. When I was a child I was
dominated and intimidated by people whom I now know to have been weaker
and sillier than I, because there was some mysterious quality in their
mere age that overawed me. I confess that, though I have kept up
appearances, I have always been afraid of the Archbishop.

BURGE-LUBIN. Between ourselves, Confucius, so have I.

CONFUCIUS. It is this that convinced me. It was this in the woman's face
that convinced you.