UTTERWORD. You will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you very
comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of wondering
whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green and crimson
dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of simplifying it
by doing these ridiculous things.

ELLIE. Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady Utterword?

HECTOR. Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That poor devil
upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his heart, just as Mangan
howls when my wife twists his.

LADY UTTERWORD. That is because Randall has nothing to do but have
his heart broken. It is a change from having his head shampooed. Catch
anyone breaking Hastings' heart!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The numskull wins, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD. I shall go back to my numskull with the greatest
satisfaction when I am tired of you all, clever as you are.

MANGAN [huffily]. I never set up to be clever.

LADY UTTERWORD. I forgot you, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN. Well, I don't see that quite, either.

LADY UTTERWORD. You may not be clever, Mr Mangan; but you are
successful.

MANGAN. But I don't want to be regarded merely as a successful man. I
have an imagination like anyone else. I have a presentiment.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I am devoting myself
to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous presentiment. You
bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the stars. [She drags him away
into the darkness].

MANGAN [tearfully, as he disappears]. Yes: it's all very well to make
fun of me; but if you only knew--

HECTOR [impatiently]. How is all this going to end?

MAZZINI. It won't end, Mr Hushabye. Life doesn't end: it goes on.

ELLIE. Oh, it can't go on forever. I'm always expecting something. I
don't know what it is; but life must come to a point sometime.

LADY UTTERWORD. The point for a young woman of your age is a baby.

HECTOR. Yes, but, damn it, I have the same feeling; and I can't have a
baby.

LADY UTTERWORD. By deputy, Hector.

HECTOR. But I have children. All that is over and done with for me:
and yet I too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and leave
everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers
of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's
madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to play
at earthquakes with.

MAZZINI. I know. I used often to t