FRANKLYN. Yes; but that is not the same thing. You and I were brought up in the old bourgeois morality. We were taught bourgeois manners and bourgeois points of honor. Bourgeois manners may be snobbish manners: there may be no pleasure in them, as you say; but they are better than no manners. Many bourgeois points of honor may be false; but at least they exist. The women know what to expect and what is expected of them. Savvy doesn't. She is a Bolshevist and nothing else. She has to improvise her manners and her conduct as she goes along. It's often charming, no doubt; but sometimes she puts her foot in it frightfully; and then I feel that she is blaming me for not teaching her better. CONRAD. Well, you have something better to teach her now, at all events. FRANKLYN. Yes: but it is too late. She doesn't trust me now. She doesn't talk about such things to me. She doesnt read anything I write. She never comes to hear me lecture. I am out of it as far as Savvy is concerned. [_He resumes his seat at the writing-table_]. CONRAD. I must have a talk to her. FRANKLYN. Perhaps she will listen to you. You are not her father. CONRAD. I sent her my last book. I can break the ice by asking her what she made of it. FRANKLYN. When she heard you were coming, she asked me whether all the leaves were cut, in case it fell into your hands. She hasnt read a word of it. CONRAD [_rising indignantly_] What! FRANKLYN [_inexorably_] Not a word of it. CONRAD [_beaten_] Well, I suppose it's only natural. Biology is a dry subject for a girl; and I am a pretty dry old codger. [_He sits down again resignedly_]. FRANKLYN. Brother: if that is so; if biology as you have worked at it, and religion as I have worked at it, are dry subjects like the old stuff they taught under these names, and we two are dry old codgers, like the old preachers and professors, then the Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas is a delusion. Unless this withered thing religion, and this dry thing science, have come alive in our hands, alive and intensely interesting, we may just as well go out and dig the garden until it is time to dig our graves. [_The parlor maid returns. Franklyn is impatient at the interruption_]. Well? what is it now? THE PARLOR MAID. Mr Joyce Burge on the telephone, sir. He wants to speak to you. FRANKLYN [_astonished_] Mr Joyce Burge! THE PARLOR MAID. Yes, sir. FRANKLYN [_to Conrad_] What on earth does this mean? I havnt heard from him nor exchanged a word with him for years. I resigned the chairmanship of the Liberal Association and shook the dust of party politics from my feet before he was Prime Minister in the Coalition. Of course, he dropped me like a hot potato. CONRAD. Well, now that the Coalition has chucked him out, and he is only one of the half-dozen leaders of the Opposition, perhaps he wants to pick you up again. THE PARLOR MAID [_warningly_] He is holding the line, sir. FRANKLYN. Yes: all right [_he hurries out_].