DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY
63
The scene fades out.
It is later in the same evening.
CHARLIE
is still at his place.
LEONORA,
wearing a dressing-gown, enters by the door and stands
behind
CHARLIE,
who does not look up from his work until she
speaks.
CHARLIE: What's the matter?
LEONORA: It isn't Catherine.
CHARLIE: Oh, it's you, Leonora. What's-–
LEONORA: Charlie, give me a child.
CHARLIE: What?
LEONORA:
A
child, I want a child.
CHARLIE: Which child, what-- ?
LEONORA: I wish to conceive a child.
CHARLIE: Leonora, are you feeling
all
right?
LEONORA: No, because I want a child. Before it's too late. I want-–
CHARLIE: Leonora. You've been overworking.
The scene fades out.
It is the next morning, and now one sees the room from a dif–
ferent angle, and out, beyond the terrace, to the canal.
CHARLIE
and
CATHERINE
are in the room.
CATHERINE: It is you, Charlie, who've been overworking. I know
what it is, you sit there at night and--
CHARLIE: I'm not the imaginative type, Catherine. You are always
saying so. Look- I sat there. She stood there--
CATHERINE: Why didn't you call me then, why didn't you wake me
up? You're always waking me up to discuss something or other.
Why didn't--
CHARLIE: I was stunned. I was embarrassed. I just lay awake and
thought about it.
CATHERINE: I think it was a dream. I mean to say, when you think
of Leonora, when you just think of Leonora, I mean to say,
Charlie. I can't think of Leonora standing here in her nightdress
and saying--
CHARLIE: Her dressing-gown. Be perfectly fair.
CATHERINE: Mter all,
if
I don't know my own cousin, I mean,
Charlie, we grew up together. Leonora's not that type. She's a
born
virgin. I ought to know. One always had to be very careful
what one said to Leonora.
