WILLIAM (_holding up his hand_). Please. Let me. (_To ISOBEL_) Why didn’t you tell us before? ISOBEL. I promised not to say anything until he was dead. Then I thought I would wait until he was buried. MARION. You couldn’t have made a mistake? You couldn’t have misunderstood him? ISOBEL (_smiling sadly_). No. WILLIAM. You say that this other man died—how many years ago? ISOBEL. Sixty, seventy. WILLIAM. Ah! (_Sarcastically_) And sixty years after he was dead he was apparently still writing poetry for Oliver Blayds to steal? ISOBEL. He had already written it—sixty years ago—for Oliver Blayds to steal. OLIVER. Good Lord! What a man! SEPTIMA. You mean that his last volume—— WILLIAM (_holding up his hand_). Please, Septima.... Take this last volume published when he was over eighty. You say that everything there had been written by this other man sixty years ago? ISOBEL. Yes. WILLIAM. And the manuscripts were kept by Oliver Blayds for sixty years, written out again by him and published in his old age as his own? ISOBEL. Yes. WILLIAM (_triumphantly_). And can you explain how it was that he didn’t publish them earlier if he had had them in his possession all those years? ISOBEL. He didn’t dare to. He was afraid of being left with nothing to publish. He took care always to have something in reserve. And that’s why everybody said how wonderfully vigorous and youthful his mind was at eighty, how amazing that the spirit and fire of youth had remained with him so long. Yes, it was the spirit and fire of youth, but of a youth who died seventy years ago. OLIVER (_impressed_). Gad, you know, fancy the old chap keeping it up like that. Shows how little one really knows people. I had no idea he was such a sportsman. SEPTIMA. Such a liar. OLIVER. Same thing, sometimes. SEPTIMA. I call it perfectly disgusting. WILLIAM. Please, please! We shan’t arrive at the truth like that. (_To ISOBEL_) You want me to understand that Oliver Blayds has never written a line of his own poetry in his life? MARION. Why, Grandfather was always writing poetry. Even as a child I remember—— SEPTIMA (_impatiently_). Mother, can’t you understand that the Oliver Blayds we thought we knew never existed? MARION. But I was telling you, dear, that even as a child—— SEPTIMA (_to OLIVER_). It’s no good, she’s hopelessly muddled. WILLIAM. Yes, yes.... Do you wish me to understand—— ISOBEL. I wish you to know the truth. We’ve been living in a lie, all of us, all our lives, and now at last we have found the truth. You talk as if, for some reason, I wanted to spread slanders about Oliver Blayds now that he is dead; as if in some way all this great lie were my doing; as if it were no pain but a sort of a pleasure to me to find out what sort of man my father really was. Ask me questions—I want you to know everything; but don’t cross-examine me as if I were keeping back the truth. WILLIAM (_upset and apologetic_). Quite so, quite so. It’s the truth which we want.