TED. Laura.  Is there anything I can do?  I am very sorry, very sorry it happened.

LAURA. [Without looking up.] What good does that do now?  You did it.

TED. Yes, I did it.  To say that he provoked me till I was crazed with shame and anger does not undo it.  That is true.

LAURA.  All right, it’s true.  What he told you about yourself you already knew.  Everybody knew it.  It was nothing but words and made no real difference in your life.  But you told him something about himself that makes all the difference in the world—­and has ruined his life and mine. [She rises.]

TED. I admit all that.

LAURA. [Near hysteria.] Well, then, shut up! [To escape from him she goes into kitchen.]

MARTIN. [Dryly, as he shades drawing.] The lady, it seems, would have been quite satisfied if you had merely called her husband a traitor to his country, a robber of blind widows, a bombastic egotist, a thieving son-of-a-’bitch and a cock-eyed liar.

TED. [Humorlessly.] It wasn’t what I called him.  It was what I told him.

MARTIN.  Precisely.  The greater the truth the greater the libel.  Ken Holden, you see, wanted to be an adult lion among the little monkeys, and you informed him that he was still an infant drawing sustenance from parental sources.

TED. [Sensing MARTIN’S friendliness approaches him like a friendless dog.] You understand, don’t you, how he provoked me?

MARTIN.  Perfectly.

TED. [Sees sketch.] Why, that’s me you’re drawing!

MARTIN.  Glad you recognized it.  Some people don’t recognize themselves in profile.

TED. It’s a good profile.  The face is good.—­But why the uniform?

MARTIN.  Clothes make the man.  I wanted to see if a uniform would make a soldier.

TED. I never wore a uniform.  I detest them.  I’d rather be shot than wear one.

MARTIN.  That’s an old Spanish custom.

TED. Spanish?

MARTIN.  Custom.  To shoot men who do not like to wear uniforms.

TED. But why do you draw me as a soldier?  What did I do to suggest that?  What made you do it?

MARTIN.  Something in Kate’s eyes, while you were posing for her, suggested it.  She seemed to think your outfit lacked something.  Well, what it lacked I have seen on parade grounds at West Point.  There it is. [Holds up drawing.]

TED. [Backs away.] Why do you torment me?

MARTIN.  I’m sorry. [He rips cardboard across and throws the halves into wastebasket.] It had no significance to you personally, Ted.—­It’s all of us.  All of us who are in the army.

TED. In the army?  What are you talking about?  We aren’t in any army.  We wouldn’t go in.  Why, half the men you meet say that in a war they’d be conscientious objectors.  The jails wouldn’t hold them.

MARTIN.  But the ditches will.