LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the
one you bought me in Brighton. I don't 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] Don't 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. I've 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 happened
to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to
bed.

LIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the
coffee; for she won't be told by me.

HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and
damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished MY 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