Jim is still a bit adolescent. He is highly intelligent, even brilliant, but hasn’t outgrown the impulsive naïveté of less experienced youth.

As the play begins a thin curl of smoke is seen rising from Linda’s iron.

JIM [dropping the magazine and sniffing]: Do I smell something burning?

LINDA [with a startled gesture]: Oh! I’m afraid you do. It’s your shirt.

JIM [jumping up]: My white shirt? My only white shirt? Linda, how could you?

LINDA: It was very simple, Jim. I was just looking at you and I completely forgot what I was doing.

JIM: Simple is right! Did it burn very much?

LINDA: Just the tail of it, darling!

JIM: Thank heavens for that! Hmmm. Maybe I’d better get out of the room when you’re ironing my shirts.

LINDA: Please don’t! I don’t want you to!

JIM: Why not?

LINDA: I like so much having you here.

JIM [naïvely flattered]: Do you really?

LINDA [impulsively hugging him]: Of course I do, my lord and master! I feel so warm and snug and protected when you are in this little room with me! [She goes over to the bureau and places his shirt in a drawer.] It is just as though I were locked up in the top room of a tower with the stairs so long and steep that nobody but you could ever come near me again.

JIM: What a poetic idea that is! I think I’ll have to paint a picture of you, Linda, in your magic tower . . .

LINDA [smiling with sudden pleasure]: In OUR magic tower!

JIM: Yes, and with your long black hair flowing out of the window like Mélisande’s. . . .

LINDA: Oh, no. Not out of the window. I never look out of the window if I can help it. It’s all so hopelessly ugly out there, those awful billboards and filling stations and delicatessens! I like to think of our— our magic tower—as being surrounded by wonderful green forests. . . .

JIM: Yes, that’s it. Green forests! Forests of pine trees!

LINDA: Yes, and lovely clear blue lakes!

JIM [suddenly laughing as the vision explodes]: With crocodiles to eat the bill collectors up!

LINDA: Oh, yes! And a dragon to breathe fire in Mrs. O’Fallon’s face every time she comes up for the rent! Oh, no! There wouldn’t be any rent or any bill collectors or Mrs. O’Fallons, would there? That’s the marvelous thing about living in a magic tower, Jim. There’s only two people. The knight and the lady!

JIM: The enchanted prince and princess!

LINDA: And they’re always together. She won’t let him leave her.

JIM: Can’t he even go hunting for supper?

LINDA: No, he can’t leave her a single moment because when he’s gone the magic tower starts to crumble. If he stays away very long it falls to pieces and turns to a desert island. . . . So even if she moons over him so much that she burns the tail of his only white shirt he has to forgive her and stay right here in the magic tower looking perfectly happy about it!