UNCLE RICHARD

But we are not wholly barbarous here, Richard. This, for example, and no first-class New England city lacks culture.

RICHARD

I suppose there’s no use explaining, but what first-class New England cities regard as culture your real artist avoids as he would avoid poison.

UNCLE RICHARD

Well, well.  But circumstances—­really, Richard, don’t you think it your duty to stay?

RICHARD

Why?

UNCLE RICHARD

Must I explain?  We are met, after a long separation, in circumstances personally sorrowful to me, and I trust, to some extent, to you as well.  We....

RICHARD

Yes, a long separation.

UNCLE RICHARD

I admit, Richard, that from your point of view my attitude has not always been as—­as considerate, perhaps, as you might have expected.  But I have been a very busy man, and—­

RICHARD

As far as I am concerned, uncle, I have nothing to blame you for; but my mother....

UNCLE RICHARD

Your mother?  Surely, Richard, your mother never criticised me to you?  She was much too fine a woman.  Besides, I helped her in many ways you may know nothing about.

RICHARD

No, mother said nothing.  She wouldn’t have, anyhow—­and as far as your helping her is concerned, I can only judge of that by results.

UNCLE RICHARD

Results?  What do you mean?  I have no desire to catalogue the things I have done for one who was near to me, but—­

RICHARD

That’s all very well, uncle, and I have no criticism to make.  What’s over is over.  But when you speak of my duty to you, I think of how mother died so young, and how I found out afterward her affairs were so difficult.  I had no idea—­she sacrificed herself for me so long that I took it for granted.  But I think that you, as a business man, must have known.

UNCLE RICHARD

You found that everything was mortgaged?  Well, Richard, it pains me to recall these things.  Your father, unfortunately, was a poor business man.  As for the mortgage, Richard, I held that myself.

RICHARD

You did!

UNCLE RICHARD