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must choose between a white woman old enough to be my great-grandmother and a black woman of my own age, I shall probably find the black woman more sympathetic? Mrs. Lutestring And more attractive in color, perhaps? Burge-Lubin Yes. Since you ask me, more⁠—well, not more attractive: I do not deny that you have an excellent appearance⁠—but I will say, richer. More Venetian. Tropical. “The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.” Mrs. Lutestring Our women, and their favorite story writers, begin already to talk about men with golden complexions. Confucius Expanding into a smile all across both face and body. A-a-a-a-a-h! Burge-Lubin Well, what of it, madam? Have you read a very interesting book by the librarian of the Biological Society suggesting that the future of the world lies with the Mulatto? Mrs. Lutestring Rising. Mr. Archbishop: if the white race is to be saved, our destiny is apparent. The Archbishop Yes: our duty is pretty clear. Mrs. Lutestring Have you time to come home with me and discuss the matter? The Archbishop Rising. With pleasure. Barnabas Rising also and rushing past Mrs. Lutestring to the door, where he turns to bar her way. No you don’t. Burge: you understand, don’t you? Burge-Lubin No. What is it? Barnabas These two are going to marry. Burge-Lubin Why shouldn’t they, if they want to? Barnabas They don’t want to. They will do it in cold blood because their children will live three hundred years. It mustn’t be allowed. Confucius You cannot prevent it. There is no law that gives you power to interfere with them. Barnabas If they force me to it I will obtain legislation against marriages above the age of seventy-eight. The Archbishop There is not time for that before we are married, Mr. Accountant General. Be good enough to get out of the lady’s way. Barnabas There is time to send the lady to the lethal chamber before anything comes of your marriage. Don’t forget that. Mrs. Lutestring What nonsense, Mr. Accountant General! Good afternoon, Mr. President. Good afternoon, Mr. Chief Secretary. They rise and acknowledge her salutation with bows. She walks straight at the Accountant General, who instinctively shrinks out of her way as she leaves the room. The Archbishop I am surprised at you, Mr. Barnabas. Your tone was like an echo from the Dark Ages. He follows the Domestic Minister. Confucius, shaking his head and clucking with his tongue in deprecation of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the Archbishop and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the President. The Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed visitors, and bursts into savage abuse of them. Barnabas Thieves! Cursed thieves! Vampires! What are you going to do, Burge? Burge-Lubin Do? Barnabas Yes, do. There must be dozens of these people in existence. Are you going to let them do what the two who have just left us mean to do, and crowd us off the face of the earth? Burge-Lubin Sitting down. Oh, come, Barnabas! What harm are they doing? Aren’t you interested in them? Don’t you like them? Barnabas Like them! I hate them. They are monsters, unnatural monsters. They are poison to me. Burge-Lubin What possible objection can there be to their living as long as they can? It does not shorten our lives, does it? Barnabas If I have to die when I am seventy-eight, I don’t see why another man should be privileged to live to be two hundred and seventy-eight. It does shorten my life, relatively. It makes us ridiculous. If they grew to be twelve feet high they would make us all dwarfs. They talked to us as if we were children. There is no love lost between us: their hatred of us came out soon enough. You heard what the woman said, and how the Archbishop backed her up? Burge-Lubin But what can we do to them? Barnabas Kill them. Burge-Lubin Nonsense! Barnabas Lock them up. Sterilize them somehow, anyhow. Burge-Lubin But what reason could we give? Barnabas What reason can you give for killing a snake? Nature tells you to do it. Burge-Lubin My dear Barnabas, you are out of your mind. Barnabas Haven’t you said that once too often already this morning? Burge-Lubin I don’t believe you will carry a single soul with you. Barnabas I understand. I know you. You think you are one of them. Confucius Mr. Accountant General: you may be one of them. Barnabas How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man, not a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the true expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will resist any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if need be. Burge-Lubin Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together. How can you, a descendant of the great Conrad Barnabas, the man who is still remembered by his masterly Biography of a Black Beetle, be so absurd? Barnabas You had better go and write the autobiography of a jackass. I am going to raise the country against this horror, and against you, if you show the slightest sign of weakness about it. Confucius Very impressively. You will regret it if you do. Barnabas What is to make me regret it? Confucius Every mortal man and woman in the community will begin to count on living for three centuries. Things will happen which you do not foresee: terrible things. The family will dissolve: parents and children will be no longer the old and the young: brothers and sisters will meet as strangers after a hundred years separation: the ties of blood will lose their innocence. The imaginations of men, let loose over the possibilities of three centuries of life, will drive them mad and wreck human society. This discovery must be kept a dead secret. He sits down. Barnabas And if I refuse to keep the secret? Confucius I shall have you safe in a lunatic asylum the day after you blab. Barnabas You forget that I can produce the Archbishop to prove my statement. Confucius So can I.