Act III

Lob's room has gone very dark as it sits up awaiting the possible
return of the adventurers. The curtains are drawn, so that no light
comes from outside. There is a tapping on the window, and anon two
intruders are stealing about the floor, with muffled cries when they
meet unexpectedly. They find the switch and are revealed as Purdie
and his Mabel. Something has happened to them as they emerged from
the wood, but it is so superficial that neither notices it: they are
again in the evening dress in which they had left the house. But they
are still being led by that strange humour of the blood.

MABEL (looking around her curiously). A pretty little room; I wonder
who is the owner?

PURDIE. It doesn't matter; the great thing is that we have escaped
Joanna.

MABEL. Jack, look, a man!

(The term may not be happily chosen, but the person indicated is Lob
curled up on his chair by a dead fire. The last look on his face
before he fell asleep having been a leery one it is still there.)

PURDIE. He is asleep.

MABEL. Do you know him?

PURDIE. Not I. Excuse me, sir, Hi! (No shaking, however, wakens the
sleeper.)

MABEL. Darling, how extraordinary.

PURDIE (always considerate). After all, precious, have we any right to
wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in
his house?

MABEL (who comes of a good family). I think he would expect it of us.

PURDIE (after trying again). There is no budging him.

MABEL (appeased). At any rate, we have done the civil thing.

(She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the
tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not
unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people
here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted
egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could
construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder
who they are and what has spirited them away?

PURDIE. Perhaps they have only gone to bed. Ought we to knock them
up?

MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done). I think
not, dear. I suppose we have run away, Jack--meaning to?

PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably.
Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime . . . (He becomes
conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer. It has not left
his face but it has shifted.) He is not shamming, do you think?

MABEL. Shake him again.

PURDIE (after shaking him). It's all right. Mabel, if the dog-like
devotion of a lifetime . . .

MABEL. Poor little Joanna! Still, if a woman insists on being a
pendulum round a man's neck . . .