ether, God help us both--say so, Pussy--but we shall understand each
other better every day; and I think I'm beginning to see now. How in the
world did you come to know just the importance of giving me just that
lead?

MRS. G. I've told you that I don't know. Only somehow it seemed that, in
all this new life, I was being guided for your sake as well as my own.

CAPT. G. (Aside.) Then Mafilin was right! They know, and we--we're blind
all of us. (Lightly.) 'Getting a little beyond our depth, dear, aren't
we? I'll remember, and, if I fail, let me be punished as I deserve.

MRS. G. There shall be no punishment. We'll start into life together
from here--you and I--and no one else.

CAPT. G. And no one else. (A pause.) Your eyelashes are all wet, Sweet?
Was there ever such a quaint little Absurdity?

MRS. G. Was there ever such nonsense talked before?

CAPT. G. (Knocking the ashes out of his pipe.) 'Tisn't what we say, it's
what we don't say, that helps. And it's all the profoundest philosophy.
But no one would understand--even if it were put into a book.

MRS. G. The idea! No--only we ourselves, or people like ourselves--if
there are any people like us.

CAPT. G. (Magisterially.) All people, not like ourselves, are blind
idiots.

MRS. G. (Wiping her eyes.) Do you think, then, that there are any people
as happy as we are?

CAPT. G. 'Must be--unless we've appropriated all the happiness in the
world.

MRS. G. (Looking toward Simla.) Poor dears! Just fancy if we have!

CAPT. G. Then we'll hang on to the whole show, for it's a great deal too
jolly to lose--eh, wife o' mine?

MRS. G. O Pip! Pip! How much of you is a solemn, married man and how
much a horrid slangy schoolboy?

CAPT. G. When you tell me how much of you was eighteen last birthday and
how much is as old as the Sphinx and twice as mysterious, perhaps I'll
attend to you. Lend me that banjo. The spirit moveth me to jowl at the
sunset.

MRS. G. Mind! It's not tuned. Ah! How that jars!

CAPT G. (Turning pegs.) It's amazingly different to keep a banjo to
proper pitch.

MRS. G. It's the same with all musical instruments, What shall it be?

CAPT. G. "Vanity," and let the hills hear. (Sings through the first and
hal' of the second verse. Turning to MRS. G.) Now, chorus! Sing, Pussy!

BOTH TOGETHER. (Con brio, to the horror of the monkeys who are settling
for the night.)--

"Vanity, all is Vanity," said Wisdom, scorning me--
I clasped my true Love'