HARRY: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just because you don't eat salt.
CLAIRE: (with one of her swift changes) Oh, Harry! Try your egg without salt. Please—please try it without salt! (an intensity which seems all out of proportion to the subject)
HARRY: An egg demands salt.
CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'
HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.
CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.
HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (going back to his breakfast)
CLAIRE: And pleased—so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure, it is just the right kind of spirit—because it gets no lift. (more brightly) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.
DICK: I'll try it now. (he goes to the breakfast table)
CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?