JAMES: A lodging for the night. The slow, dark hours. For me and my colleague, Corner. I’m glad you’ve met Corner. You read him every day. (He picks up one of the newspapers.) Listen to this—“Counselor Worm’s Tour in Europe. Counselor Worm, who has just returned from a visit to Paris and Le Touquet, reports that the French feel deeply.” The text is Corner’s. The headlines are mine. I wanted to call it “A Worm’s-Eye View,” but the chief sub-editor is against gaiety on the Globe.

CORNER: There’s a telegram for you on the mantelpiece. He’s always like this, Doctor, after he’s seen you. She seems to be a nice girl, methedrine.

KREUZER: She can let a man down, too.

JAMES (reading telegram): It’s from my mother. I suppose she’s fetching Anne from school. It’s just as I told you. This is the way they always visit me. Between trains. Lucky Nottingham is a junction. In the summer term I never see them; I suppose there’s a better connection.

KREUZER: You’re still excited, Callifer.

JAMES: Well, I’ve remembered something, haven’t I? Did you ever have a toy spade, Corner? Doctor, are all your patients as anxious as I am to be cured?

KREUZER: They don’t come until they want it enough.

JAMES: You should try him, Corner. You might stop throwing away half-smoked cigarettes at three and tenpence a packet. It might lend color to your reports of council meetings. A jab in the arms, a little nausea for a few seconds, and then—a desire to talk till the cows come home. What time do cows come home, Corner?

CORNER: It depends what you mean by cows. Callifer, if your mum’s coming I’m going to my room. She always makes me feel like a cub reporter. Good-bye, Dr. Kreuzer.

KREUZER: Good-bye, Mr. Corner.

CORNER: I’ll come for a shot in the arm myself one day.

Corner leaves. There is a short silence.

KREUZER: It’s not only the methedrine which is exciting you.

JAMES: Why are you really here, Doctor?

KREUZER: I have a sense that I failed you today.

JAMES: You? Why?

KREUZER: You came to me with a kind of hope.

JAMES: I went away with a kind of hope, too.

KREUZER: We are not in my consulting room now. Perhaps you can talk to me more easily here.

JAMES: I’ve talked myself dry. Six months of talking. It hasn’t got us far. Perhaps what I really need is action.

KREUZER: What action? What’s that you’re playing with?

JAMES: A toy. Something I picked up. We’ve been talking about childhood so long, you mustn’t mind if I start playing with toys again. Not a spade this time. We’ve exhausted the spade.