Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 253

warned. It's not even that you must resist it always. Because you've

got to start much sooner than that. You've got to be already prepared

to resist it, say no to it, long before you see it; you must have

already said no to it long before you even know what it is. I'll have

the cigarette now, please.

Stevens takes up the pack, rising and working the end of a cigarette free,

and extends the pack. She takes the cigarette, already speaking again

while Stevens puts the pack on the desk and takes up the lighter which the

Governor, watching Temple, shoves back across the desk where Stevens can

reach it. Stevens snaps the lighter on and holds it out. Temple makes no

effort to light the cigarette, holding the cigarette in her hand and

talking. Then she lays the cigarette unlighted on the ashtray and Stevens

closes the lighter and sits down again, putting the lighter down beside

the pack of cigarettes.

TEMPLE

Because Temple Drake liked evil. She only went to the ball game

because she would have to get on a train to do it, so that she could

slip off the train the first time it stopped, and get into the car to

drive a hundred miles with a man-

STEVENS

-who couldn't hold his drink.

TEMPLE

(to Stevens) All right. Aren't I just saying that?

(to Governor)

An optimist. Not the young man; he was just doing the best he knew,

could. It wasn't him that suggested the trip: it was Temple-

STEVENS

It was his car though. Or his mother's.

TEMPLE

(to Stevens) All right. All right.

(to Governor)

No, Temple was the optimist: not that she had foreseen, planned ahead

either: she just had unbounded faith that her father and brothers

would know evil when they saw it, so all she had to do was, do the one

thing which she knew they would forbid her to do if