Requiem for a Nun

Scene Two

Stevens living-room 6:00 P.m. November thirteenth.

Living-room, a center table with a lamp, chairs, a sofa left rear,

floor-lamp, wall-bracket lamps, a door left enters from the hall, double

doors rear stand open on a dining-room, a fireplace right with gas logs. The

atmosphere of the room is smart, modern, up-to-date, yet the room itself has

the air of another time-the high ceiling, the cornices, some of the furni-

ture; it has the air of being in an old house, an ante-bellum house

descended at last to a spinster survivor who has modernised it (vide the gas

fire and the two overstuffed chairs) into apartments rented to young couples

or families who can afford to pay that much rent in order to live on the

right street among other young couples who belong to the right church and

the country club.

Sound of feet, then the lights come on as if someone about to enter had

pressed a wall switch, then the door left opens and Temple enters, followed

by Gowan, her husband, and the lawyer, Gavin Stevens. She is in the middle

twenties, very smart, soign6e, in an open fur coat, wearing a hat and

gloves and carrying a handbag. Her air is brittle and tense, yet con-

trolled. Her face shows nothing as she crosses to the center table and

stops. Gowan is three or four years older. He is almost a type; there were

many of him in America, the South, between the two great wars: only

children of financially secure parents living in city apartment hotels,

alumni of the best colleges, South or East, where they belonged to the

right clubs; married now and raising families yet still alumni of their

schools, performing acceptably jobs they themselves did not ask for,

usually concerned with money: cotton futures, or stocks, or bonds. But this

face is a little different, a little more than that. Something has happened

to it-tragedy-something, against which it had had no warning, and to cope

with which (as it discovered) no equipment, yet which it has accepted and

is trying, really and sincerely and selflessly (perhaps for the first time

in its life) to do its best with according to its code. He and Stevens wear

their overcoats, carrying their hats. Stevens stops just inside the room.

Gowan drops his hat onto the sofa in passing and goes on to where Temple

stands at the table, stripping off one of her gloves.

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