JOHN. I promise you, Maggie, I never will.
MAGGIE. To go back to The Pans and take up my old life there, when all these six years my eyes have been centred on this night! I’ve been waiting for this night as long as you have been; and now to go back there, and wizen and dry up, when I might be married to John Shand!
JOHN. And you will be, Maggie. You have my word.
MAGGIE. Never—never—never. [She tears up the document. He remains seated immovable, but the gleam returns to his eye. She rages first at herself and then at him.] I’m a fool, a fool, to let you go. I tell you, you’ll rue this day, for you need me, you’ll come to grief without me. There’s nobody can help you as I could have helped you. I’m essential to your career, and you’re blind not to see it.
JOHN. What’s that, Maggie? In no circumstances would I allow any meddling with my career.
MAGGIE. You would never have known I was meddling with it. But that’s over. Don’t be in too great a hurry to marry, John. Have your fling with the beautiful dolls first. Get the whiphand of the haughty ones, John. Give them their licks. Every time they hiccough let them have an extra slap in memory of me. And be sure to remember this, my man, that the one who marries you will find you out.
JOHN. Find me out?
MAGGIE. However careful a man is, his wife always finds out his failings.
JOHN. I don’t know, Maggie, to what failings you refer.
[The Cowcaddens Club has burst its walls, and is pouring this way to raise the new Member on its crest. The first wave hurls itself against the barber’s shop with cries of ‘Shand, Shand, Shand.’ For a moment, JOHN stems the torrent by planting his back against the door.]