of
you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to
Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But
don't you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled
on and talked down. I'll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he's able to
support me.

HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an
ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm
not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.

LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you
said a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a
puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.

HIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all
dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

LIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on
you. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.

HIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name?

LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.

HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha!

LIZA. I'll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.

HIGGINS [rising in a fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that
toadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one
step in his direction and I'll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her].
Do you hear?

LIZA [defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew you'd
strike me some day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having
forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into
his seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a
fool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge
you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil
and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That's done you,
Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that [snapping her fingers] for
your bullying and your big talk. I'll advertize it in the papers that
your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll
teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a
thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet
and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to
lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.

HIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it's
better th