THE NEWLY BORN.  What is a tail?

THE HE-ANCIENT A habit of which your ancestors managed to pure themselves.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  None of us now believe that all this machinery of flesh and blood is necessary.  It dies.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  It imprisons us on this petty planet and forbids us to range through the stars.

ACIS.  But even a vortex is a vortex in something.  You cant have a whirlpool without water; and you cant have a vortex without gas, or molecules or atoms or ions or electrons or something, not nothing.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  No:  the vortex is not the water nor the gas nor the atoms:  it is a power over these things.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny.  It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable.  Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.

ACIS [evidently out of his depth] I shouldn’t think too much about it if I were you.  You have to keep sane, you know.

The two Ancients look at one another; shrug their shoulders; and address themselves to their departure.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  We are staying too long with you, children.  We must go.

All the young people rise rather eagerly.

ARJILLAX.  Dont mention it.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  It is tiresome for us, too.  You see, children, we have to put things very crudely to you to make ourselves intelligible.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  And I am afraid we do not quite succeed.

STREPHON.  Very kind of you to come at all and talk to us, I’m sure.

ECRASIA.  Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  It is difficult for them.  They have forgotten how to speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion.  We do not communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you do.

THE HE-ANCIENT.  I find it more and more difficult to keep up your language.  Another century or two and it will be impossible.  I shall have to be relieved by a younger shepherd.

ACIS.  Of course we are always delighted to see you; but still, if it tries you very severely, we could manage pretty well by ourselves, you know.

THE SHE-ANCIENT.  Tell me, Acis:  do you ever think of yourself as having to live perhaps for thousands of years?

ACIS.  Oh, don’t talk about it.  Why, I know very well that I have only four years of what any reasonable person would call living; and three and a half of them are already gone.

ECRASIA.  You must not mind our saying so; but really you cannot call being an ancient living.

THE NEWLY BORN [almost in tears] Oh, this dreadful shortness of our lives!  I cannot bear it.