ere is a certain amount of tosh about this notion of wickedness.
It doesn't work. You must look at facts. Not that I would say a
word in favor of anything wrong; but then, you see, all sorts of
chaps are always doing all sorts of things; and we have to fit
them in somehow, don't you know. What I mean is that you can't
go cutting everybody; and that's about what it comes to. [Their
rapt attention to his eloquence makes him nervous] Perhaps I
don't make myself clear.

LADY BRITOMART. You are lucidity itself, Charles. Because Andrew
is successful and has plenty of money to give to Sarah, you will
flatter him and encourage him in his wickedness.

LOMAX [unruffled] Well, where the carcase is, there will the
eagles be gathered, don't you know. [To Undershaft] Eh? What?

UNDERSHAFT. Precisely. By the way, may I call you Charles?

LOMAX. Delighted. Cholly is the usual ticket.

UNDERSHAFT [to Lady Britomart] Biddy--

LADY BRITOMART [violently] Don't dare call me Biddy. Charles
Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit.
Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you
are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my
conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a
vehemence that almost wrecks the chair].

UNDERSHAFT. My dear, you are the incarnation of morality. [She
snorts]. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you
have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late;
and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.

CUSINS. Understand this, you old demon--

LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!

UNDERSHAFT. Let him alone, Biddy. Proceed, Euripides.

CUSINS. You have me in a horrible dilemma. I want Barbara.

UNDERSHAFT. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the
difference between one young woman and another.

BARBARA. Quite true, Dolly.

CUSINS. I also want to avoid being a rascal.

UNDERSHAFT [with biting contempt] You lust for personal
righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good
conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call
patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself.

CUSINS. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good
man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity--

UNDERSHAFT. Pity! The scavenger of misery.

CUSINS. Well, love.

UNDERSHAFT. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love
the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the
Irishma