CONRAD. Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden? It was a first attempt at biology anyhow.
LUBIN [recovering his self-possession] I am sound on the Garden of Eden. I have heard of Darwin.
SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.
LUBIN. What! Already!
SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask Uncle. Ask the first person you meet in the street. [She rises and crosses to Haslam]. Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?
HASLAM. Priceless. [He complies].
FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin; but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke, dear.
Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes his mind.
LUBIN [shrewd and serious] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised; and I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I may be wrong.
BURGE [in a burst of irony] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!