ROSIE. You won't persuade a man like my father to see the error of his ways by blurting out a bundle of unpleasant truths. You're a reformer in a hurry. You won't realize that his convictions are just as strong as yours and that he is too old to alter.
CHARLIE (With some slight return of spirit) And I'm too young to alter. We've got beyond the point when wisdom was regarded as the monopoly of senile decay. I won't turn back. (Rising from table and going l.)
ROSIE. My dear boy, I don't ask you to. I only ask you to advance intelligently, (over to Charlie, l.) to understand that the odds against you are too great for you to fight single-handed.
CHARLIE (gloomily). You're quite right. I'm a broken gambler. I'm bankrupt for this fight now—bankrupt with no assets. Your father's got them all.
ROSIE. No, Charlie, not all. You've one asset that he'd give half his wealth to have.
CHARLIE. I have? What's that?
ROSIE. You've youth. You can afford to wait. You mustn't throw up the sponge and fly at a first reverse.
CHARLIE. It seems so hopeless to try to do anything here. I thought I'd got hold of the men. Tonight's work has settled all that. I shall never recover my influence. I don't know—of course one never does—but there might be some place in the world where I could be of use. There's just a chance, and I want to try again—to redeem all this. These things mean so much to me—more than anything else in the world. Suffering—poverty—I see them so clearly. Whenever I think of other things, things I desire, my own personal wishes—they get in the way.
ROSIE. And are you alone blessed with eyesight? Do you think me blind? Do you combine your modern socialism with a mediaeval conception of women? Charlie, if the men's condition has been an obsession with you, with me it's been the passion of a lifetime. It's gone near to wrecking my life.
CHARLIE (involuntarily). How?