DICK:  Is that what I do?

(A laugh, a look between them, which is held into significance.)

HARRY:  (who is not facing them) Where’s the salt?

DICK:  Oh, I fell down in the snow.  I must have left the salt where I fell.  I’ll go back and look for it.

CLAIRE:  And change the temperature?  We don’t need salt.

HARRY:  You don’t need salt, Claire.  But we eat eggs.

CLAIRE:  I must tell you I don’t like the idea of any food being eaten here, where things have their own way to go.  Please eat as little as possible, and as quickly.

HARRY:  A hostess calculated to put one at one’s ease.

CLAIRE:  (with no ill-nature) I care nothing about your ease.  Or about
Dick’s ease.

DICK:  And no doubt that’s what makes you so fascinating a hostess.

CLAIRE:  Was I a fascinating hostess last night, Dick? (softly sings)
‘Oh, night of love—­’ (from the Barcorole of ’Tales of Hoffman’)

HARRY:  We’ve got to have salt.

(He starts for the door. CLAIRE slips in ahead of him, locks it, takes the key.  He marches off, right.)

CLAIRE:  (calling after him) That end’s always locked.

DICK:  Claire darling, I wish you wouldn’t say those startling things.  You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a shock—­and really, it’s unwise.

CLAIRE:  Haven’t you learned that the best place to hide is in the truth? (as HARRY returns) Why won’t you believe me, Harry, when I tell you the truth—­about doors being locked?

HARRY:  Claire, it’s selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just because you don’t eat salt.

CLAIRE:  (with one of her swift changes) Oh, Harry!  Try your egg without salt.  Please—­please try it without salt! (an intensity which seems all out of proportion to the subject)

HARRY:  An egg demands salt.

CLAIRE:  ‘An egg demands salt.’  Do you know, Harry, why you are such an unseasoned person?  ‘An egg demands salt.’

HARRY:  Well, it doesn’t always get it.

CLAIRE:  But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.

HARRY:  Not an inch of lift. (going back to his breakfast)

CLAIRE:  And pleased—­so pleased with itself, for getting no lift.  Sure, it is just the right kind of spirit—­because it gets no lift. (more brightly) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.

DICK:  I’ll try it now. (he goes to the breakfast table)

CLAIRE:  You must have tried and tried things.  Isn’t that the way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?

HARRY:  Claire.

DICK:  (pushing back his egg) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.

HARRY:  Claire, there is a limit.

CLAIRE:  Precisely what I had in mind.  To perversion too there is a limit.  So—­the fortifications are unassailable.  If one ever does get out, I suppose it is—­quite unexpectedly, and perhaps—­a bit terribly.