MARION. But I was telling you, dear, that even as a child——
SEPTIMA (to OLIVER). It’s no good, she’s hopelessly muddled.
[231]WILLIAM. Yes, yes.... Do you wish me to understand——
ISOBEL. I wish you to know the truth. We’ve been living in a lie, all of us, all our lives, and now at last we have found the truth. You talk as if, for some reason, I wanted to spread slanders about Oliver Blayds now that he is dead; as if in some way all this great lie were my doing; as if it were no pain but a sort of a pleasure to me to find out what sort of man my father really was. Ask me questions—I want you to know everything; but don’t cross-examine me as if I were keeping back the truth.
WILLIAM (upset and apologetic). Quite so, quite so. It’s the truth which we want.
MARION. As Grandfather said so beautifully himself in his “Ode to Truth”—What are the lines?
SEPTIMA (hopelessly). Oh, Mother!
MARION. Yes, and that was what I was going to say—could a man who wrote so beautifully about Truth as Grandfather did tell lies and deceive people as Isobel says he did? (To ISOBEL) I’m sure you must have made a mistake, dear.
OLIVER. You never told us—what was the other fellow’s name?
WILLIAM. I am coming to that directly. What I am asking you now is this. Did Oliver Blayds write no line of poetry himself at all?