LIZA I heard your prayers. “Thank God it’s all over!”

HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, dont you thank God it’s all over? Now you are free and can do what you like.

LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? Whats to become of me?

HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, thats whats worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldnt bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you wont have much difficulty in settling yourself somewhere or other, though I hadnt quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. .You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and youre not bad-looking; it’s quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes — not now, of course, because youre crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when youre all right and quite yourself, youre what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you wont feel so cheap.

ELIZA again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.

The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.

HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well.

LIZA We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.

HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?

LIZA I sold flowers. I didnt sell myself. Now youve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish youd left me where you found me.

HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] [221] Tosh, Eliza. Dont you insult human relations by dragging all this cant[222] about buying and selling into it. You neednt marry the fellow if you dont like him.

LIZA What else am I to do?

HIGGINS Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist’s shop? Pickering could set you up in one: hes lots of money. [Chuckling] He’ll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! youll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I’m devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was.

LIZA Your slippers.

HIGGINS Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].

LIZA Before you go, sir —

HIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him Sir] Eh?

LIZA Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?

HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering ?

LIZA He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.

HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is t h a t the way you feel towards us?

LIZA I dont want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.

HIGGINS But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night?

LIZA I want to know what I may take away with me. I dont want to be accused of stealing.

HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldnt have said that, Eliza. That shews a want of feeling.

LIZA I’m sorry. I’m only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There cant be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn’t?

HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. Theyre hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].[223]

LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I dont want to run the risk of their being missing.

HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I’d ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains].

LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isnt the jeweler’s: it’s the one you bought me in Brighton. I dont want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Dont you hit me.

HIGGINS Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.

LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I’m glad. Ive got a little of my own back, anyhow.

HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever hap pend to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.

LIZA [pertly] Youd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she wont be told by me.

HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely] .

ELIZA smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of HIGGINS’s exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring. ^{57}

ACT V

Mrs. Higgins’s drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The parlor-maid comes in.

THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with Colonel Pickering.

MRS. HIGGINS Well, shew them up.

THE PARLOR-MAID Theyre using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the police, I think.

MRS. HIGGINS What!

THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry’s in a state, mam. I thought I’d better tell you.

MRS. HIGGINS If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when theyve finished with the police. I suppose hes lost something.

THE PARLOR-MAID Yes, mam [going].

MRS. HIGGINS Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.

THE PARLOR-MAID Yes, mam.

HIGGINS bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.