Undershaft has brought his own fountain pen. There will be no delay while someone searches for one. The five thousand pounds they have been struggling to find can be made available at the table in a few strokes. Mrs Baines has already thanked God and wants the check for the afternoon meeting. Barbara's fiancé gives up his place. Everyone watches the pen—until Barbara tells her father to stop.

She knows exactly how badly the money is needed. Major is her rank in the Salvation Army; the people she meets need meals, shelter and jobs. Moments earlier she was urging her fiancé to write an appeal to the newspapers. The collections taken in hats yield pennies when the work needs thousands. She hates discovering that, while she sings a hymn, she is thinking about the amount the next verse might bring in. Keeping the doors open has begun to consume the energy she hoped to give the people coming through them.

So she initially cheers when Mrs Baines announces a gift of five thousand pounds. It is conditional: five other donors must provide a thousand each. Then Undershaft identifies the benefactor behind the aristocratic title. The money comes from Bodger's liquor business. The changed name brings the announcement back to people Barbara knows: drinkers struggling to escape an appetite that advertising helps cultivate. Now the business's success is to enter the story of their relief.

Barbara would welcome Bodger himself, if he came willing to face his life and change it. What troubles her is the possibility that the check can make the journey in his place. His contribution arrives, the consequences of his trade remain, and she is expected to find a new language for something she opposed yesterday. The money's usefulness makes gratitude more difficult, not less. She cannot dismiss it as an empty gesture.

Her father will supply the entire matching sum. He manufactures weapons and does not conceal it. Earlier he told her fiancé that he could buy the Army. This is more than a hostile interpretation imposed on a generous donor. He is testing something in front of his daughter. He need not acquire legal ownership of the organization to influence how it welcomes him or explains what he represents.

Mrs Baines has an answer Barbara cannot easily escape. If the shelter closes, will the people outside drink less or more? Money from liquor can be put to work against the consequences of liquor. She has not declared the trade harmless. She is responsible for keeping assistance available. A morally unimpeachable refusal inside the building will not make anyone at the door less hungry.

This is a real objection, not a device for making Barbara's principles look foolish. The money can buy food. It can keep people housed. Suspicion about its source does not abolish those uses. But solving those problems need not settle every question about the giver. The two women serve the same people, yet the situation increasingly demands that one surrender what she values most in order for the other to keep working.

Bill Walker is nearby, waiting for Barbara's response. After striking Jenny and an older woman, he returned with a sovereign, hoping payment would finish the matter. Jenny refused it for herself and suggested compensating the older woman. He would not. When a donation to the Army was proposed, Barbara wanted his soul, not his coin. He threw the money onto a drum. The large check now gives him an obvious taunt: perhaps salvation can be bought after all; his offer was merely too small.

Compensating an injured person, stopping the violence and asking for conversion are not identical demands. Barbara's own way of dealing with Bill has bound them together. The celebration of a much larger gift makes it harder to explain where one ends and another begins. She is not standing outside the institution's contradictions, examining other people's compromises from a safe distance.

Undershaft is adept at using the discomfort. He describes the suffering his weapons cause so forcefully that Mrs Baines briefly recoils. Then he reverses the argument. If the Army promotes peace, is he not supporting work that could eventually damage his own business? Her delight returns. She sees evil being redirected toward good. He seems to enjoy the ease with which an accusation can be made to conclude in his welcome. Different convictions carry the same check across the table.

Mrs Baines's sincerity does not remove every troubling element of the appeal. She has used a poor man's reduced hostility to the wealthy as evidence of the Army's success. Undershaft immediately recognizes an advantage to employers. Relief, conversion, social peace and public gratitude are all real activities; they are also entangled. The people Barbara wants to help can become an argument about why the donation benefits its source.

Once the check is written, it acquires a procession. Undershaft is invited to the meeting, where Barbara is to announce that he has saved the Army. Her fiancé appears with a flag and trombone. Music and jokes surround the transaction. Going with them would mean more than allowing someone else to accept money. She would appear in her own rank and name as a witness to the account they are about to celebrate.

She cannot go. Mrs Baines asks tearfully whether accepting the money was wrong. Barbara kisses her and acknowledges what she must do to preserve the work. The moment frustrates a clean division between a compromised fundraiser and a pure dissenter. Barbara can recognize the other woman's responsibility without joining the procession. Understanding the pressure does not make her own distress disappear.

Then she removes the silver badge from her collar and calls her father over. When he realizes that she means to pin it on him, he retreats. She follows, attaches it and steps back to display him. Is it not rather little to get for five thousand pounds? The man who can describe his own trade's horrors with composure becomes uneasy before this small visible return. He can no longer watch the gratitude entirely from outside it.

The gesture does not restore her certainty. She cannot pray and wants the company to leave. They reassure her that she is overworked and will recover; the music moves away while she remains in the yard. Bill continues mocking her. Neither the donation nor her refusal has made him kinder. She cannot command the afternoon back into an order she understands.

Yet the people immediately before her remain. She offers Bill her hand as he leaves, without receiving much graciousness in return, then turns to Peter Shirley, the older unemployed worker. His experience of being discarded suddenly feels closer to her own. He reminds her that she still has youth and hope. She promises to seek work for him and counts her money.

These sums have readily named uses: tea for two, a bed for Peter and her fare home. He dislikes being the object of charity. Barbara proposes sharing as friends, and asks something of him too: talk to her, keep her from crying. He may talk about books and speeches at odds with her beliefs. Agreement with her religion is not the admission price for this exchange. They go out together, each possessing something the other can use.

A little tea money cannot replace the ten thousand pounds. Nor does leaving the procession place Barbara beyond compromised wealth. In Act III she visits her father's weapons factory and imagines working among people whose meals and housing are secure—people who can reject her message without losing their bread. That subsequent choice is not proof that the arms business has become harmless. She still sees the homes and families its products can destroy.

For the moment, she has not solved those larger questions. Peter needs somewhere to sleep tonight. Her badge is on another collar, and the work no longer has its old assured name. She has a little money; he has something to say. Neither requires the other to accept an explanation of the whole world before making what is available between them available now.