UNDERSHAFT [stooping to smell the bouquet] Where did you get the flowers, my dear? LADY BRITOMART. Your men presented them to me in your William Morris Labor Church. CUSINS [springing up] Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church! LADY BRITOMART. Yes, with Morris's words in mosaic letters ten feet high round the dome. NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ANOTHER MAN'S MASTER. The cynicism of it! UNDERSHAFT. It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in church. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan't. I don't ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons, if they are really necessary. UNDERSHAFT. I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in English business. But he's not a foundling; and there's an end of it. CUSINS [diplomatically] Not quite. [They all turn and stare at him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft]. I think--Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my future course--but I think the foundling difficulty can be got over. UNDERSHAFT. What do you mean? CUSINS. Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a confession. SARAH. } LADY BRITOMART. } Confession! BARBARA. } STEPHEN. } LOMAX. Oh I say! CUSINS. Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Until I met Barbara I thought myself in the main an honorable, truthful man, because I wanted the approval of my conscience more than I wanted anything else. But the moment I saw Barbara, I wanted her far more than the approval of my conscience. LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus! CUSINS. It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I did. She bought my soul like a flower at a street corner; but she bought it for herself. UNDERSHAFT. What! Not for Dionysos or another? CUSINS. Dionysos and all the others are in herself. I adored what was divine in her, and was therefore a true worshipper. But I was romantic about her too. I thought she was a woman of the people, and that a marriage with a professor of Greek would be far beyond the wildest social ambitions of her rank. LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!! LOMAX. Oh I say!!! CUSINS. When I learnt the horrible truth-- LADY BRITOMART. What do you mean by the horrible truth, pray? CUSINS. That she was enormously rich; that her grandfather was an earl; that her father was the Prince of Darkness-- UNDERSHAFT. Chut! CUSINS.--and that I was only an adventurer trying to catch a rich wife, then I stooped to deceive about my birth.