CURT. How are you doing?
CAPTAIN. Poorly. [Pause] Then comes a moment when the faculty for what you call poetical imagination gives out. And then reality leaps forth in all its nakedness—It is frightful! [He is now speaking in a voice of lachrymose senility, and with his lower jaw drooping] Look here, my dear friend—[controls himself and speaks in his usual voice] forgive me!—When I was in the city and consulted the doctor [now the tearful voice returns] he said that I was played out—[in his usual voice] and that I couldn't live much longer.
CURT. Was that what he said?
CAPTAIN. [With tearful voice] That's what he said!
CURT. So it was not true?
CAPTAIN. What? Oh—no, that was not true. [Pause.
CURT. Was the rest of it not true either?
CAPTAIN. What do you mean?
CURT. That my son was ordered to report here as cadet?
CAPTAIN. I never heard of it.