KEN. It takes a woman to do a thing like that.

LAURA. I loved you.

KEN. It takes love.--That's what love is. [He goes to door.] That's what it does to a man. [Pause. The room is deathly quiet.] And when I was a boy I used to wonder why some of the world's wisest men hung out with whores.

CURTAIN


ACT III

Same. Several hours later, about 10 P. M. TED is sitting in a corner with a book, but unable to concentrate. He is wretchedly unhappy and jumpy.

LAURA paces back and forth.

MARTIN sits at a table with a pencil, sketching, evidently using TED, whose face is exposed to him in profile, as a model.

There is an air of tense, long waiting. Little is said, and then spoken in quick and jerky tempo, with long pauses.