Keegan.  This world, sir, is very clearly a place of torment and penance, a place where the fool flourishes and the good and wise are hated and persecuted, a place where men and women torture one another in the name of love; where children are scourged and enslaved in the name of parental duty and education; where the weak in body are poisoned and mutilated in the name of healing, and the weak in character are put to the horrible torture of imprisonment, not for hours but for years, in the name of justice.  It is a place where the hardest toil is a welcome refuge from the horror and tedium of pleasure, and where charity and good works are done only for hire to ransom the souls of the spoiler and the sybarite.  Now, sir, there is only one place of horror and torment known to my religion; and that place is hell.  Therefore it is plain to me that this earth of ours must be hell, and that we are all here, as the Indian revealed to me—­perhaps he was sent to reveal it to me to expiate crimes committed by us in a former existence.

Aunt Judy [awestruck].  Heaven save us, what a thing to say!

Cornelius [sighing].  It’s a queer world:  that’s certain.

Broadbent.  Your idea is a very clever one, Mr Keegan:  really most brilliant:  I should never have thought of it.  But it seems to me—­if I may say so—­that you are overlooking the fact that, of the evils you describe, some are absolutely necessary for the preservation of society, and others are encouraged only when the Tories are in office.

Larry.  I expect you were a Tory in a former existence; and that is why you are here.

Broadbent [with conviction].  Never, Larry, never.  But leaving politics out of the question, I find the world quite good enough for me:  rather a jolly place, in fact.

Keegan [looking at him with quiet wonder].  You are satisfied?

Broadbent.  As a reasonable man, yes.  I see no evils in the world—­except, of course, natural evils—­that cannot be remedied by freedom, self-government, and English institutions.  I think so, not because I am an Englishman, but as a matter of common sense.

Keegan.  You feel at home in the world, then?

Broadbent.  Of course.  Don’t you?

Keegan [from the very depths of his nature].  No.

Broadbent [breezily].  Try phosphorus pills.  I always take them when my brain is overworked.  I’ll give you the address in Oxford Street.

Keegan [enigmatically:  rising].  Miss Doyle:  my wandering fit has come on me:  will you excuse me?

Aunt Judy.  To be sure:  you know you can come in n nout as you like.

Keegan.  We can finish the game some other time, Miss Reilly. [He goes for his hat and stick.

Nora.  No:  I’m out with you [she disarranges the pieces and rises].  I was too wicked in a former existence to play backgammon with a good man like you.