Alice looks doubtfully at the laggards trailing to their places and
snapping down the stalls. But Uncle Edward is adamant to her if
tolerant to them.

"Some of 'em always late," and his blue eye roves round. "It's their
dinner. But go and begin your bit like a good girl."

So then Alice comes to the middle of the stage; swallows a little from
nervousness, and begins...

ALICE. If you please, this is going to be a Harlequinade ... a real one.
And we begin it at the beginning, which is as many thousand years ago as
you like to believe. It's about how ... how ...

UNCLE EDWARD. Psyche.

ALICE. When I was young I would call her Fishy. It is all about how Psyche,
who is a perfect darling ...

UNCLE EDWARD. You are not to put bits in.

ALICE. Well, she is a perfect darling. But you don't see her in the first
scene. Now Psyche, who is the Soul, comes down ... whenever a baby's born,
of course, a little scrap of Psyche is sent down! ... But this is how the
story goes ... That she comes down from Mount Olympus where the gods live
to adventure on the earth. And in the Harlequinade she's Columbine, but
that only means a dove, and a dove is the symbol of the soul. And anybody
who is fond of flowers knows that, because if you look at Columbine flowers
you can see that they are made of doves with their wings out. And so she
ought always to be dressed in blue.