Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 295

STEVENS

(quotes)

'Wbo am 1, to have the brazen temerity and hardihood to set the puny

appanage of my office in the balance against that simple undeviable

aim? Who am 1, to render null and abrogate the purchase she made

with that poor crazed lost and worthless life?'

TEMPLE

(wildly)

And good too-good and mellow too. So it was not even in hopes of

saving her life, that I came here at two o'clock in the morning. It

wasn't even to be told that he had already decided not to save her.

It was not even to confess to my husband, but to do it in the

hearing of two strangers, something which I bad spent eight years

trying to expiate so that my husband wouldn't have to know about it.

Dont you see? That's just suffering. Not for anything: just

suffering.

STEVENS

You came here to affirm the very thing which Nancy is going to die

tomorrow morning to postulate: that little children, as long as they

are little children, shall be intact, unanguished, untorn,

unterrified.

TEMPLE

(quietly)

All right. I have done that. Can we go home now?

STEVENS

.Wool I Yes.(she turns, moves toward the

steps, Stevens beside her. As she

reaches the first step, she falters,

seems to stumble slightly, like a

sleepwalker. Stevens steadies her

but at once she frees her arm,

and begins to descend)

TEMPLE

(on the first step: to no one, still

with that sleepwalker air)

To save my soul-if I have a soul. If there is a God to

save it-a God who wants it-

(Curtain)