Requiem for a Nun

218 WILLIAM FAULKNER

virgin, cross country by car to another country college ball game,

gets drunker than twenty gentlemen, gets lost, gets still drunker than

forty gentlemen, wrecks the car, passes eighty gentlemen now, passes

completely out while the maiden the virgin is being kidnapped into a

Memphis whorehouse-

(He mumbles an indistinguish-

able word)

STEVENS

What?

GOWAN

Sure; cowardice. Call it cowardice; what's a little euphony between

old married people?

STEVENS

Not the marrying her afterward, at least. What-

GOWAN

Sure. Marrying her was purest Old Virginia. That was indeed the

hundred and sixty gentlemen.

STEVENS

The intent was, by any other standards too. The prisoner in the

whorehouse; I didn't quite hear-

GOWAN

(quickly: reaching for it) Where's your glass? Dump that

slop-here-

STEVENS

(holds glass)

This will do. What was that you said about held prisoner in the

whorehouse?

GOWAN

(harshly) That's all. You heard it.

STEVENS

You said 'and loved it.'

(they stare at each other)

Is that what you can never forgive her for?- not for having been the

instrument creating that moment in your life which you can never

recall nor forget nor explain nor condone nor even stop thinking

about, but because she herself didn't even suffer, but on the

contrary, even liked it-that month or whatever it was like the episode

in the old movie of the white