LAURA.  But you asked me.

WILL.  What did you go for if you didn’t want to?

LAURA. You wanted me to.

WILL.  I don’t quite get you.

LAURA.  Well, Will, you have all my time when I’m not in the theatre, and you can do with it just what you please.  You pay for it.  I’m working for you.

WILL.  Is that all I’ve got,—­just your time?

LAURA. [Wearily.] That and the rest. [LAURA crosses up to desk, gets “part,” crosses to sofa, turning pages of “part."] I guess you know. [Crosses to sofa and sits.

WILL. [Looking at her curiously.] Down in the mouth, eh?  I’m sorry.

LAURA.  No, only if you want me to be frank, I’m a little tired.  You may not believe it, but I work awfully hard over at the theatre.  Burgess will tell you that.  I know I’m not so very good as an actress, but I try to be. [LAURA lies down on sofa.] I’d like to succeed, myself.  They’re very patient with me.  Of course they’ve got to be,—­that’s another thing you’re paying for, but I don’t seem to get along except this way.

WILL.  Oh, don’t get sentimental.  If you’re going to bring up that sort of talk, Laura, do it sometime when I haven’t got a hang-over, and then don’t forget talk never does count for much.

LAURA crosses up to mirror, picks up hat from box, puts it on, looks in mirror.  She turns around and looks at him steadfastly for a minute.  During this entire scene, from the time the curtain rises, she must in a way indicate a premonition of an approaching catastrophe, a feeling, vague but nevertheless palpable, that something is going to happen.  She must hold this before her audience so that she can show to them, without showing to him, the disgust she feels. LAURA has tasted of the privations of self-sacrifice during her struggle, and she has weakly surrendered and is unable to go back, but that brief period of self-abnegation has shown to her most clearly the rottenness of the other sort of living.  There are enough sentimentality and emotion in her character to make it impossible for her to accept this manner of existence as ELFIE does.  Hers is not a nature of careless candour, but of dreamy ideals and better living, warped, handicapped, disillusioned, and destroyed by a weakness that finds its principal force in vanity. WILL resumes his newspaper in a more attentive way.  The girl looks at him and expresses in pantomime, by the slightest gesture or shrug of the shoulders, her growing distaste for him and his way of living.  In the meantime WILL is reading the paper rather carefully.  He stops suddenly and then looks at his watch.

LAURA.  What time is it?

WILL.  After ten.

LAURA.  Oh.