LINDA: It’s always time for music. See! He doesn’t deny it. I am his evil star. . . . Dance with me, darling, before you go.

JIM [taking her in his arms]: Linda! You’re so indifferent!

LINDA: Indifferent? Oh, if you only knew! How excited I am!

JIM: Worried?

LINDA: Not a bit! Why should I be? There’s not a doubt in my mind, I’m so sure of you, Jim!

JIM [beaming with pride]: Are you really?

[Pause. Linda takes it up. They dance gaily around the room.]

LINDA: Remember to ask him for an advance payment, Jim. We’re five weeks behind on the rent!

JIM: Five weeks? Ho, ho! That’s nothing!

LINDA: And guess what we’re having for supper tonight?

JIM: Nightingale tongues! We’ll have nightingale tongues!

LINDA [shouting]: Half a loaf of stale bread!

JIM [breaking away and clasping his ears]: Well, half a loaf is better than none!

LINDA [burying her head on his shoulder and hugging him]: But it’s such stale bread, darling. So dreadfully stale. It would ruin your dental work!

JIM: Remember the Bishop of Bingen? While everyone else was stricken with famine he locked himself up in a tower filled with good grain. Alas, poor fellow! The rats ate him up.

LINDA [laughing]: What’s the moral, please?

JIM: We’ll never be eaten by rats! [Picking up canvases.] The filthy little rats of greed will never get into this magic tower of ours, will they, Linda?

LINDA [smiling]: Of course they won’t!

JIM: There is something magical about it, isn’t there?

LINDA: This little room of ours?

JIM: Yes. Our magic tower. With stairs so long and steep that nobody but you and I can ever reach it! [Goes to door smiling raptly.] It’s like living in a state of enchantment, isn’t it, Linda? [Opening the door.] Don’t you feel that way about it sometimes, Linda?

LINDA [softly]: Of course I do. I feel it so strongly sometimes that I’m frightened!

JIM: Why frightened?

LINDA: I wonder where it will end.

JIM [laughing]: Then you aren’t really enchanted. In a state of enchantment people are never concerned about endings. They just go on and on and on. Nothing ever happens. Nothing, I mean, that really matters.

LINDA: How thrilling that sounds! I wonder if it’s true?

JIM: I’ll prove it to you, Linda!

LINDA [gently]: I’m sure that you will. [She kisses him and he goes out the door.]

JIM [going down stairs]: And nightingale tongues for supper! Remember that. Walking in wet weather gives me such an appetite! So long. . . .

LINDA [standing in doorway]: I wish you weren’t going.

JIM [from the stairs]: Why?

LINDA: When you’re gone the magic tower isn’t safe. I have such awful thoughts!

JIM: About me?

LINDA: No. About me. I think what a bother I am. How happy you’d be without me. Just think, if it wasn’t for me you’d still be a gay young student without a care in the world!

JIM: You lovely fool! I’d be the world’s most miserable man! So long. . . .