TOM: Supposed to do!

AMANDA: Expression! Not in my -TOM: Ohhh!!

AMANDA: Presence! Have you gone out of your senses?

TOM: I have, that’s true, driven out!

AMANDA: What is the matter with you, you – big – big IDIOT!

TOM: Look!- I’ve got no thing, no single thing!

AMANDA: Lower Your Voice!

TOM: In my life here that I can call my OWN! Everything is –

AMANDA: Stop that shouting!

TOM: Yesterday you confiscated my books! You had the nerve to –

AMANDA: I took that horrible novel back to the library- yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. [Tom laughs wildly.] I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them – [Tom laughs still more wildly.] BUT I WON’T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! NO, no, no, no, no!

TOM: House, house! Who pays rent on it, who makes a slave of himself to –

AMANDA [fairly screeching]: Don’t you DARE to –

TOM: No, no, I mustn’t say things! I’ve got to just –

AMANDA: Let me tell you-

TOM: I don’t want to hear any more! [He tears the portières open. The upstage area is lit with a turgid smoky red glow.]

[AMANDA’s hair is in metal curlers and she wears a very old bathrobe much too large for her slight figure, a relic of the faithless Mr. Wingfield. An upright typewriter and a wild disarray of manuscripts are on the drop-leaf table. The quarrel was probably precipitated by his creative labour. A chair lying overthrown on the floor. Their gesticulating shadows are cast on the ceiling by the fiery glow.]

AMANDA: You will hear more, you –

TOM: No, I won’t hear more, I’m going out!

AMANDA: You come right back in –

TOM: Out, out, out! Because I’m –

AMANDA: Come back here, Tom Wingfield! I’m not through talking to you!

TOM: Oh, go –

LAURA [desperately]: Tom!