Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 209

backward: if you're not sitting down, why dont you go? Let me be

bereaved and vindicated, but at least let me do it in privacy, since

God knows if any one of the excretions should take place in privacy,

triumph should be the one-

Stevens watches her. Then he crosses to her, taking the handkerchief from

his breast pocket, stops behind her and extends the handkerchief down

where she can see it. She looks at it, then up at him. Her face is quite

calm.

TEMPLE

What's that for?

STEVENS

It's all right. It's dry too.

(still extending the bandkerchief)

For tomorrow, then.

TEMPLE

(rises quickly)

Oh, for cinders. On the train. We're going by air; hadn't Gowan told

you? We leave from the Memphis airport at midnight; we're driving up

after supper. Then California tomorrow morning; maybe we'll even go on

to Hawaii in the spring. No; wrong season: Canada, maybe. Lake Louise

in May and June-

(she stops, listens a moment toward the dining-room doors)

So why the handkerchief? Not a threat, because you dont have anything

to threaten me with, do you? And if you dont have anything to threaten

me with, I must not have anything you want, so it cant be a bribe

either, can it?

(they both hear the sound from beyond the dining-room

doors which indicates that Gowan is approaching. Temple

lowers her voice again, rapidly)

Put it this way then. I dont know what you want, because I dont care.

Because whatever it is, you wont get it from me.

(the sound is near now-footsteps, clink of glass)

Now he'll offer you a drink, and then he'll ask you too what you want,

why you followed us home. I've already answered you. No. If what you

came for is