[She rises quickly and gracefully and slips through the portieres. Jim laughs softly to himself. He kneels to wind the Victrola and put on a record. It is very worn and plays very faintly—“Whispering.” Laura comes back in with a piece of glass cupped in her palm. Something has happened to Laura. Something secret and lovely has opened up in her face like the long delayed opening of a flower. Jim sees it as she steps between the portieres and stands graceful and hesitant and incredibly delicate in the light of the candles. He rises slowly to his feet, and there is a pause in which they look at each other across the candelabra. Laura laughs a little—tenderly and shyly. She half extends her hand with the piece of glass. Jim’s face is grave—attentive.]

JIM [softly]: What is it—Laura?

LAURA: Only one to give you an idea of them.

JIM [slowly extending his hand]: What is it?

LAURA: This one’s a unicorn. Do you know what that is?

JIM: —No. —What?

LAURA: Something that doesn’t exist in the world anymore.

JIM: —Oh!

LAURA: It used to, though, when the world was in its childhood.

JIM: It looks like a horse.

LAURA: It is a horse. With a horn.

JIM: —Oh. —That doesn’t exist anymore.

LAURA: No. —All of this kind have—disappeared from the world. Gone like father—with only music behind them!

JIM: Yeah. I see what you mean.

LAURA: He’s all that’s left of the beautiful unicorn horses.

LAURA: He’s white. He’s not white, he’s—blue—Spilled over white! The way snow is when it’s—late in the afternoon. Now hold him up— You see how he catches the light? Oh, he loves it, loves it! He has a permanent place on the top shelf in the window, where the sun stays longest because he—loves it!—so.

JIM: But they’re all gone, the others of—his description?

LAURA: —Yes.

JIM: He must be—lonesome.

LAURA: He is! He’s very brave, though, and he doesn’t complain about it. He stays on the shelf with the ordinary horses that don’t have horns, and he seems to be getting along with them very nicely. I don’t hear arguments going on among them!

JIM [laughs, rather astonished]: —No?—Well, well—No arguments—going on . . . [He stares gravely at Laura, not at the ornament of glass. She draws it slowly back and closes her fingers gently around it.]

LAURA: You have to be careful, careful!— If you breathe—it breaks!

JIM: A fellow like me—couldn’t touch it?

LAURA: Oh, I think you could!

JIM: You don’t know very much about me yet.

LAURA: You told a good deal at the table.

JIM: I didn’t think you were listening!

LAURA: Oh, I was!

JIM: I can’t imagine what made me talk so much!