THE HOUSE[F]
Professor and Mrs. Ray are at the little table finishing their coffee. In the center there is a white-robed birthday cake with three golden candles sending a gentle light on them. A myriad of faint wrinkles on the Professor’s kindly face might betray his age, though his thin body, in spite of its slight stoop, belies his seventy years. As he sits there precisely dressed in his evening clothes, he is the personification of fine breeding, the incarnation of all that blood and culture can produce. And through it all, there glows an alluring whimsy which one has no right to expect in a professor of philosophy.
Mrs. Ray, gowned also for the ceremony they are celebrating, is ten years younger; soft and gentle, too, yet sadder somehow, as though, in spite of her effort to live in his enthusiasms, it has become a bit difficult to sustain his mood of happiness.
But as they sip their coffee alone in the hotel suite with its conventional furnishings of a stereotyped comfort, graced only by a large bunch of white roses, one senses the deep and abiding affection which has warmed their long life together.
Professor
(With a sigh of contentment)
Ah!
(He sees she is thoughtful: he reaches over and takes from behind the table the quart bottle of champagne. He pours a little in her glass.)
Mrs. Ray