PHILIP. You’ve been reading that American magazine, Esquire. You’re not supposed to read what it says, you know. You’re only supposed to look at the pictures.

DOROTHY. You order a whiskey with Perrier, and I have a champagne cocktail.

PHILIP. I don’t like it.

DOROTHY. What?

PHILIP. The story. If you have to have day dreams, just keep me out of them, will you?

DOROTHY. It’s just playing, darling.

PHILIP. Well, I don’t play any more.

DOROTHY. But you did, darling. And we had lovely fun playing.

PHILIP. Just count me out now.

DOROTHY. But aren’t we friends?

PHILIP. Oh, yes, you make all sorts of friends in a war.

DOROTHY. Darling, please stop it! Aren’t we lovers?

PHILIP. Oh, that? Oh, certainly. Of course. Why not?

DOROTHY. But aren’t we going to go and live together and have a lovely time and be happy? The way you say always in the night?

PHILIP. No. Not in a hundred thousand bloody years. Never believe what I say in the night. I lie like hell at night.

DOROTHY. But why can’t we do what you say we’ll do at night?

PHILIP. Because I’m in something where you don’t go on and live together and have a lovely time and be happy.

DOROTHY. But why not?

PHILIP. Because, principally, I’ve discovered you’re too busy. And secondly, it doesn’t seem very important compared to any number of other things.

DOROTHY. But you’re never busy!

PHILIP. [He feels himself talking too much, but goes on] No. But after this is over I’ll get a course of discipline to rid me of any anarchistic habits I may have acquired. I’ll probably be sent back to working with pioneers or something like that.

DOROTHY. I don’t understand.

PHILIP. And because you don’t understand, and you never could understand, is the reason we’re not going to go on and live together and have a lovely time and etcetera.

DOROTHY. Oh, it’s worse than Skull and Bones.

PHILIP. What in God’s name is Skull and Bones?

DOROTHY. It’s a secret society a man belonged to one time that I had just enough sense not to marry. It’s very superior and awfully good and worthy, and they take you in and tell you all about it, just before the wedding, and when they told me about it, I called the wedding off.

PHILIP. That’s an excellent precedent.

DOROTHY. But can’t we just go on now, as long as we have each other, I mean if we aren’t going to always keep on, and be nice and enjoy what we have and not be bitter?

PHILIP. If you like.

DOROTHY. I’d like.