60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

      MARCHBANKS (rising, scared). No: I mustn’t talk. (He looks round him in his lost way, and adds, suddenly) I think I’ll go out and take a walk in the park. (Making for the door.)

      CANDIDA. Nonsense: it’s shut long ago. Come and sit down on the hearthrug, and talk moonshine as you usually do. I want to be amused. Don’t you want to?

      MARCHBANKS (in half terror, half rapture). Yes.

      CANDIDA. Then come along. (She moves her chair back a little to make room. He hesitates; then timidly stretches himself on the hearthrug, face upwards, and throws back his head across her knees, looking up at her.)

      MARCHBANKS. Oh, I’ve been so miserable all the evening, because I was doing right. Now I’m doing wrong; and I’m happy.

      CANDIDA (tenderly amused at him). Yes: I’m sure you feel a great grown up wicked deceiver — quite proud of yourself, aren’t you?

      MARCHBANKS (raising his head quickly and turning a little to look round at her). Take care. I’m ever so much older than you, if you only knew. (He turns quite over on his knees, with his hands clasped and his arms on her lap, and speaks with growing impulse, his blood beginning to stir.) May I say some wicked things to you?

      CANDIDA (without the least fear or coldness, quite nobly, and with perfect respect for his passion, but with a touch of her wisehearted maternal humor). No. But you may say anything you really and truly feel. Anything at all, no matter what it is. I am not afraid, so long as it is your real self that speaks, and not a mere attitude — a gallant attitude, or a wicked attitude, or even a poetic attitude. I put you on your honor and truth. Now say whatever you want to.

      MARCHBANKS (the eager expression vanishing utterly from his lips and nostrils as his eyes light up with pathetic spirituality). Oh, now I can’t say anything: all the words I know belong to some attitude or other — all except one.

      CANDIDA. What one is that?

      MARCHBANKS (softly, losing himself in the music of the name). Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida, Candida. I must say that now, because you have put me on my honor and truth; and I never think or feel Mrs. Morell: it is always Candida.

      CANDIDA. Of course. And what have you to say to Candida?

      MARCHBANKS. Nothing, but to repeat your name a thousand times. Don’t you feel that every time is a prayer to you?

      CANDIDA. Doesn’t it make you happy to be able to pray?

      MARCHBANKS. Yes, very happy.

      CANDIDA. Well, that happiness is the answer to your prayer. Do you want anything more?

      MARCHBANKS (in beatitude). No: I have come into heaven, where want is unknown.

      (Morell comes in. He halts on the threshold, and takes in the scene at a glance.)

      MORELL (grave and self-contained). I hope I don’t disturb you. (Candida starts up violently, but without the smallest embarrassment, laughing at herself. Eugene, still kneeling, saves himself from falling by putting his hands on the seat of the chair, and remains there, staring open mouthed at Morell.)

      CANDIDA (as she rises). Oh, James, how you startled me! I was so taken up with Eugene that I didn’t hear your latchkey. How did the meeting go off? Did you speak well?

      MORELL. I have never spoken better in my life.

      CANDIDA. That was first rate! How much was the collection?

      MORELL. I forgot to ask.

      CANDIDA (to Eugene). He must have spoken splendidly, or he would never have forgotten that. (To Morell.) Where are all the others?

      MORELL. They left long before I could get away: I thought I should never escape. I believe they are having supper somewhere.

      CANDIDA (in her domestic business tone). Oh; in that case, Maria may go to bed. I’ll tell her. (She goes out to the kitchen.)

      MORELL (looking sternly down at Marchbanks). Well?

      MARCHBANKS (squatting cross-legged on the hearthrug, and actually at ease with Morell — even impishly humorous). Well?

      MORELL. Have you anything to tell me?

      MARCHBANKS. Only that I have been making a fool of myself here in private whilst you have been making a fool of yourself in public.

      MORELL. Hardly in the same way, I think.

      MARCHBANKS (scrambling up — eagerly). The very, very, VERY same way. I have been playing the good man just like you. When you began your heroics about leaving me here with Candida —

      MORELL (involuntarily). Candida?

      MARCHBANKS. Oh, yes: I’ve got that far. Heroics are infectious: I caught the disease from you. I swore not to say a word in your absence that I would not have said a month ago in your presence.

      MORELL. Did you keep your oath?

      MARCHBANKS. (suddenly perching himself grotesquely on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her — reading my own poems — anybody’s poems — to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can’t think how heroic it was, and how uncomfortable! Then —

      MORELL (steadily controlling his suspense). Then?

      MARCHBANKS (prosaically slipping down into a quite ordinary attitude in the chair). Then she couldn’t bear being read to any longer.

      MORELL. And you approached the gate of Heaven at last?

      MARCHBANKS. Yes.

      MORELL. Well? (Fiercely.) Speak, man: have you no feeling for me?

      MARCHBANKS (softly and musically). Then she became an angel; and there was a flaming sword that turned every way, so that I couldn’t go in; for I saw that that gate was really the gate of Hell.

      MORELL (triumphantly). She repulsed you!

      MARCHBANKS (rising in wild scorn). No, you fool: if she had done that I should never have seen that I was in Heaven already. Repulsed me! You think that would have saved me — virtuous indignation! Oh, you are not worthy to live in the same world with her. (He turns away contemptuously to the other side of the room.)

      MORELL (who has watched him quietly without changing his place). Do you think you make yourself more worthy by reviling me, Eugene?

      MARCHBANKS. Here endeth the thousand and first lesson. Morell: I don’t think much of your preaching after all: I believe I could do it better myself. The man I want to meet is the man that Candida married.

      MORELL. The man that — ? Do you mean me?

      MARCHBANKS. I don’t mean the Reverend James Mavor Morell, moralist and windbag. I mean the real man that the Reverend James must have hidden somewhere inside his black coat — the man that Candida loved. You can’t make a woman like Candida love you by merely buttoning your collar at the back instead of in front.

      MORELL (boldly and steadily). When Candida promised to marry me, I was the same moralist and windbag that you now see. I wore my black coat; and my collar was buttoned behind instead of in front. Do you think she would have loved me any the better for being insincere in my profession?

      MARCHBANKS (on the sofa hugging his ankles). Oh, she forgave you, just as she forgives me for being a coward, and a weakling, and what you call a snivelling little whelp and all the rest of it. (Dreamily.) A woman like that has divine insight: she loves our souls, and not our follies and vanities and illusions, or our collars and coats, or any other of the rags and tatters we are rolled up in. (He reflects on this for an instant; then turns intently to question Morell.) What I want to know is how you got past the flaming sword that stopped me.

      MORELL (meaningly). Perhaps because I was not interrupted at the end of ten minutes.

      MARCHBANKS (taken aback). What!

      MORELL. Man can