Camele and Jack (moving towards the door). Good-bye!
All. Good-bye!
Yvonne (following them). Good-bye.
Alice and George. Good-bye.
George (after a nervous silence). I’ll see you to-night, Alice; now I must go to meet Uncle Billy.
Alice. Then you can’t see me to-night if he is in town. You will have to arrange about the “Azure Adder.”
George. The “Azure Adder”—my life’s work—my magazine. How I do wish to get it started! Think what it means! A perfect magazine given to the world after years of darkness. A book perfect in printing, arrangement and in illustration—as beautiful to look at as a masterpiece of painting or sculpture. What a standard it will create when it is published! It will stand alone—nothing but what will suffer when compared to it. It will be above other publications; above them as a golden star over a world of night and ignorance—all will be beneath it! And I who have conceived it will be lost in its splendor. Like a bumble-bee is lost in a lily of silver. Laboring, laboring on for it to the end, through old age, perhaps from beyond the grave. What a life—yes, “Azure Adder,” I give to you my time, my energy and my talents. (He grows more and more excited and is now speaking to himself.) I will make of you an aesthetic standard, an artistic gauge and a religion! A new religion whose one and only Goddess will be Beauty—Beauty veiled, alone and sterile! And we who work for you will be its first priests—the priests of a new religion! You know what that means? It always has meant, and will mean in this case, I hope, martyrdom and perhaps death! Death for our gracious goddess—to whom I give my mind and my body! Yes, great and awful goddess, they are yours! (He stands, with his arms outstretched, against the door at the back.) Do as you will! (In a loud ringing voice.) They are yours forever!!
Alice (smiling, walks up to him). Thank you.
George (in the same voice). To you, great goddess, I give my mind and—