.The schoolroom.  The next morning.  Present are: THOMASINA, SEPTIMUS, JELLABY.  We have seen this composition before: THOMASINA at her place at the table; SEPTIMUS reading a letter which has just arrived; JELLABY waiting, having just delivered the letter.

'The Couch of Eros' is in front of SEPTIMUS, open, together with sheets of paper on which he has been writing.  His portfolio is on the table.  Plautus (the tortoise) is the paperweight.  There is also an apple on the table now, the same apple from all appearances.

SEPT: (With his eyes on the letter)  Why have you stopped?

  (THOMASINA is studying a sheet of paper, a 'Latin unseen' lesson.  She is having some difficulty.)

THOM. : Solio insessa...in igne...seated on a throne ...in the fire....and also on a ship....sedebat regina...sat the queen....

SEPT: There is no reply, Jellaby.  Thank you.

  (He folds the letter up and places it between the leaves of 'The Couch of Eros'.)

JELL:  I will say so, sir.

THOM:  .....the wind smelling sweetly....purpureis velis....by, with or from purple sails - 

SEPT:  (To JELLABY)  I will have something for the post, if you would be so kind.

JELL:  (Leaving)  Yes, sir.

THOM:  ....was like as to - something - by, with or from lovers - oh, Septimus! - musica tibiarum imperabat...music of pipes commanded...

SEPT:  'Ruled' is better.

THOM:  ....the silver oars - exciting the ocean - as if - as if - amorous -

SEPT:  That is very good.

  (He picks up the apple.  He picks off the twig and leaves, placing these on the table.  With a pocket knife he cuts a slice of apple, and while he eats it, cuts another slice which he offers to Plautus.)

THOM:  Regina reclinabat....the queen - was reclining - praeter descriptionem - indescribably - in a golden tent....like Venus and yet more - 

SEPT:  Try to put some poetry into it.

THOM:  How can I if there is none in the Latin?

SEPT:  Oh, a critic!

THOM:  Is it Queen Dido?

SEPT:  No.

THOM:  Who is the poet?

SEPT:  Known to you.

THOM:  Known to me?

SEPT:  Not a Roman.

THOM:  Mr Chater?

SEPT:  Your translation is quite like Chater.

  (SEPTIMUS picks up his pen and continues with his own writing.)

THOM:  I know who it is, it is your friend Byron.

SEPT:  Lord Byron, if you please.

THOM:  Mama is in love with Lord BYron.

SEPT: (Absorbed)  Yes.  Nonsense.

THOM:  It is not nonsense.  I saw them together in the gazebo.

  (SEPTIMUS's pen stops moving, he raises his eyes to her at last.)

Lord Byron was reading to her from his satire, and mama was laughing, with her head in her best position.

SEPT:  She did not understand the satire, and was showing politeness to a guest.

THOM:  She is vexed with papa for his determination to alter the park, but that alone cannot account for her politeness to a guest.  She came downstairs hours before her custom.  Lord Byron was amusing at breakfast.  He paid you a tribute, Septimus.

SEPT:  Did he?

THOM:  He said you were a witty fellow, and had almost by heart an article you wrote about - well, I forget what, but it concerned a book called 'The Maid of Turkey' and how you would not give it to your dog for dinner.

SEPT:  Ah.  Mr Chater was at breakfast, of course.

THOM:  He was, not like certain lazybones.

SEPT:  He does not have Latin to set and mathematics to correct.

  (He takes Thomasina's lesson book from underneath Plautus and tosses it down the table to her.) 

THOM:  Correct?  What was incorrect in it?  (She looks into the book.)  Alpha minus?  Pooh!  What is the minus for?

SEPT:  For doing more than was asked.

THOM:  You did not like ny discovery?

SEPT:  A fancy is not a discovery.

THOM:  A gibe is not a rebuttal.

  (SEPTIMUS finishes what he is writing.  He folds the pages into a letter.  He has sealing wax and the means  to melt it.  He seals the letter and writes on the cover.  Meanwhile - )

You are churlish with me because mama is paying attention to your friend.   Well, let them elope, they canot turn back the advancement of knowledge.  I think it is an excellent discovery.  Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles.  God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?  Do we believe nature is written in numbers?

SEPT:  We do.

THOM:  Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manufacture?

SEPT:  I do not know.

THOM:  Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.

SEPT:  He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow.

THOM:  What a faint-heart!  We must work outward from the middle of themaze.  We will start with something simple.  (She picks up the apple leaf.)  I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation.  You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Byron is dead and forgotten.

  (SEPTIMUS completes the business with his letter.  He puts the letter in his pocket.)

SEPT:  (Firmly)  Back to Cleopatra.

THOM:  Is it Cleopatra? - I hate Cleopatra!

SEPT:  You hate her?  Why?

THOM:  Everything is turned to love with her.  New love, absent love, lost love - I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex.  It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop.  If Queen Elizabeth had been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different - we would be admiring the pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona.

SEPT:  God save us.

THOM:  But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue.  Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it?  All the lost plays of the Athenians!  Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes - thousands of poems - Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors!  How can we sleep gor grief?

SEPT:  By counting our stock.  Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripedes, my lady!  You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old.  We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind.  The procession is very long and life is very short.  We die on the march.  But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.  The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language.  Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more.  Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.  You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be lost for a corkscrew?  I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus.  Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.  Now, where are we?  Let me see if I can attempt a free translation for you.  At Harrow I was better at this than Lord Byron.

  (He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it, testing one or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself.)

Yes - 'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne....burned on the water ...the - something - the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and - what's this? - oh, yes, - so perfumed that - 

THOM: (Catching on and furious)  Cheat!

Sept:  (Impertubably)  '- the winds were lovesick with them....'

THOM:  Cheat!

SEPT:  '....the oars were silver which to the tune of flutes kept stroke....'

THOM:  (Jumping to her feet)  Cheat!  Cheat!  Cheat!

SEPT:  (As though it were too easy to make the effort worthwhile)  '...and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes.  For her own person, it beggared all description - she did lie in her pavilion -'

  (THOMASINA, in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the garden.)

THOM:  I hope you die!

.......