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ACIS. Yes: inhuman. Why don't you fall in love with someone? ECRASIA. I! I have been in love all my life. I burned with it even in the egg. ACIS. Not a bit of it. You and Arjillax are just as hard as two stones. ECRASIA. You did not always think so, Acis. ACIS. Oh, I know. I offered you my love once, and asked for yours. ECRASIA. And did I deny it to you, Acis?
ECRASIA. It is as easy to understand as any other ignorant error. What artist is as great as his own works? He can create masterpieces; but he cannot improve the shape of his own nose. ACIS. There! What have you to say to that, old one? THE HE-ANCIENT. He can alter the shape of his own soul.
ACIS. You didn't even know what love was. ECRASIA. Oh! I adored you, you stupid oaf, until I found that you were a mere animal. ACIS. And I made no end of a fool of myself about you until I discovered that you were a mere artist. You appreciated my contours! I was plastic, as Arjillax says. I wasn't a man to you: I was a masterpiece appealing to your tastes and your senses.
THE NEWLY BORN. Oh, do not be so unkind, Arjillax. You will make water come out of my eyes again. I modelled them out of the stuff Pygmalion made for them. They are masterpieces of art. And see what they have done! Does that convince you of the value of art, Arjillax! STREPHON. They look dangerous. Keep away from them. ECRASIA. No need to tell us that, Strephon. Pf! They poison the air.
MARTELLUS. She has bitten a piece out of his hand nearly as large as a finger nail: enough to kill ten men. There is no pulse, no breath. ECRASIA. But his thumb is clinched. MARTELLUS. No: it has just straightened out. See! He has gone. Poor Pygmalion! STREPHON. Hush, dear: thats childish. What a loss to Science! ARJILLAX. Who cares about Science? Serve him right for making that pair of horrors!
ECRASIA. I say that if the ancients had thoroughly grasped the theory of fine art they would understand that the difference between a beautiful nose and an ugly one is of supreme importance: that it is indeed the only thing that matters. THE SHE-ANCIENT. That is, they would understand something they could not believe, and that you do not believe. ACIS. Just so, mam.
ECRASIA. But what a pity he died! What a glimpse of the past we have lost! He could have told us stories of the Golden Age. PYGMALION. Not he. He was a most dangerous beast. He was afraid of me, and actually tried to kill me by snatching up things and striking at me with them. I had to give him two or three pretty severe shocks before I convinced him that he was at my mercy.
Which is just what this old gentleman and this old lady seem to think too. THE SHE-ANCIENT. Quite so. THE HE-ANCIENT. Precisely. What do you want to be? THE HE-ANCIENT. A vortex. THE NEWLY BORN. A what? THE SHE-ANCIENT. A vortex. I began as a vortex: why should I not end as one? ECRASIA. Oh! That is what you old people are, Vorticists. ACIS. But if life is thought, can you live without a head?
PYGMALION. Yours, too, of course, if the stimulus comes from you. ECRASIA. Cannot he do anything original? PYGMALION. No. But then, you know, I do not admit that any of us can do anything really original, though Martellus thinks we can. ACIS. Can he answer a question? PYGMALION. Oh yes. A question is a stimulus, you know. Ask him one. Of us, for instance, and our ways and doings?
Art is not honest: that is why I never could stand much of it. It is all make-believe. Ecrasia never really says things: she only rattles her teeth in her mouth. ECRASIA. Acis: you are rude. ACIS. You mean that I wont play the game of make-believe. Well, I don't ask you to play it with me; so why should you expect me to play it with you? ECRASIA. You have no right to say that I am not sincere.
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