her chance, loth to desert him).
It's not Fate, Joanna. Fate is something outside us. What really
plays the dickens with us is some thing in ourselves. Something that
makes us go on doing the same sort of fool things, however many
chances we get.

MABEL. Something in ourselves?

PURDIE (shivering). Something we are born with.

JOANNA. Can't we cut out the beastly thing?

PURDIE. Depends, I expect, on how long we have pampered him. We can at
least control him if we try hard enough. But I have for the moment an
abominably clear perception that the likes of me never really tries.
Forgive me, Joanna--no, Mabel--both of you. (He is a shamed
man.) It isn't very pleasant to discover that one is a rotter. I
suppose I shall get used to it.

JOANNA. I could forgive anybody anything to-night. (Candidly.) It is
so lovely not to be married to you, Jack.

PURDIE (spiritless). I can understand that. I do feel small.

JOANNA (the true friend). You will soon swell up again.

PURDIE (for whom, alas, we need not weep). That is the appalling
thing. But at present, at any rate, I am a rag at your feet,
Joanna--no, at yours, Mabel. Are you going to pick me up? I don't
advise it.

MABEL. I don't know whether I want to, Jack. To begin with, which of
us is it your lonely soul is in search of?

JOANNA. Which of us is the fluid one, or the fluider one?

MABEL. Are you and I one? Or are you and Joanna one? Or are the three
of us two?

JOANNA. He wants you to whisper in his ear, Mabel, the entrancing
poem, 'Mabel Purdie.' Do it, Jack; there will be nothing wrong in it
now.

PURDIE. Rub it in.

MABEL. When I meet Joanna's successor--

PURDIE (quailing). No, no, Mabel none of that. At least credit me with
having my eyes open at last. There will be no more of this. I swear
it by all that is--

JOANNA (in her excellent imitation of a sheep). Baa-a, he is off
again.

PURDIE. Oh Lord, so I am.

MABEL. Don't, Joanna.

PURDIE (his mind still illumined). She is quite right--I was. In my
present state of depression--which won't last--I feel there is
something in me that will make me go on being the same ass, however
many chances I get. I haven't the stuff in me to take warning. My
whole being is corroded. Shakespeare knew what he was talking
about--'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in
ourselves, that we are underlings.'

JOANNA. For 'dear Brutus' we are to read 'dear audience' I suppose?

PURDIE. You have it.