Arcadia Chapter Summary & Analysis | Act 2, Scene 7, Part 3

Act 2, Scene 7, Part 3 Summary

Septimus comes in reading Thomasina's papers. She rushes in, wearing a nightgown and carrying a candle, insisting that he teach her to dance before she turns seventeen. He refuses, but she persists and kisses him. He says she can stay only if she is silent and still. She sits, and he reads as Hannah comes in, half drunk. Valentine rushes in through another door without noticing Hannah, finds Thomasina's diagram and places it on the table where he and Septimus both study it. They both refer to how it's not mathematics but foresight, understanding without knowing how. Valentine explains to Hannah that Thomasina understood that heat, particularly friction, can only go one way, while Septimus observes that decay of the universe also goes only one way and is therefore the only, and ultimate, result of life. Thomasina tells him that's why they have to dance now, before time runs out.