ARTHUR: Why not? It would do you some good. You with your books, your anthologies, your metaphysical poets. William Blake and John Donne. They're dead, Hertha. All your lovers are dead and bound up in books. They can't touch you. They can't make love to you tonight. They've been in the ground too long. Don't you know that? (
He turns out the suspended light above.) This is life and you're scared of it. You've never come up against it before. You haven't found it in any of your alphabetical files. It's taken you by surprise, Hertha, the way it took me when I came back from Europe and saw Heavenly Critchfield again, laughing at me the way that she used to. It hurts you. It's big and awful and crazy and makes you want to run and hise from it. But you can't Hertha. Hiding doesn't do any good. (
He catches one of her hands which she holds before her in a defensive gesture.) You've got little hands--they're little candle-wax hands.
HERTHA (faintly): Let go of me, Arthur.
ARTHUR: No. I won't let go.
HERTHA: Please do.
ARTHUR: No.
HERTHA: If you don't I'll have to call Miss Schlagmann.
ARTHUR: Go ahead. Call her.--Haven't you ever been kissed? No. Only in books. By William Blake and John Donne. "Go, and catch a falling star,/Get with child a mandrake root."--Those are your lovers but they've got cold lips. They've been in the ground so long not even April can make them warm, again, Hertha. But I'm not cold. Heavenly thinks I am but she's mistaken. The whiskey's made me warm for a change. I'm hot inside. If I touched you with my lips you'd think you'd been scorched by fire. You'd crumple up like a little white moth that's flown into the candle flame, Hertha. That's what you'd do. (
He pulls her against him.)
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