Last night, I was dreaming...

MARGARET CASE MORGAN

A dialogue achieved, but not without difficulty, in the slight, treacherous haze of the morning after

■ SCENE: Living-room in the apartment of LELA WAYNE (or, as she prefers to be called since a Paris court granted her that delicate privilege, MRS. LORING WAYNE).It is a room created, under the wand of an interior decorator, in conscious serenity; but its surface has been a little ruffled by the exigencies of modern life. On the table the grave cover of a Bookman deprecates the froth of a Vie Parisienne flung lightly across it; on the piano and mantel, clusters of mauve tulips stand in tall vases, impeccable in their grace— except that, in one or two, the frail ash of a Dimitrino fallen from a casual hand, drifts lightly in the clear water around their stems.

LELA, a little irritable beneath the tranquil folds of her apricot chiffon, is lying on the couch, drinking something effervescent out of an amber glass. GERMAINE, a maid, stands in the doorway, as neat and direct as an exclamation point.

GERMAINE: Mr. Rierdon is on the telephone again, Madame.

LELA (pressing a pale finger to her temple) : Tell him I'm not in. Tell him again. Tell him I'm still not in.

GERMAINE goes out to deliver the message, but is interrupted in the hall by the ringing of the door-bell. She opens the door to admit GEORGE RIERDON, a permanently haggard young man, but one tastefully dressed for it.

■ LELA (coldly, looking from her couch into the hall) : IIow did you get here so quickly? You were on the telephone just now.

GEORGE (giving his hat and coat to Germaine) : Oh, I telephoned up from downstairs this time. You know me—Georgie, the Thoughtfullest Boy on Our Block. (He lights a cigarette and drops into an armchair opposite Lela's couch) How are you? But don't tell me. I was in wine last night—I admit it. And personally, I feel terrible . . . you could file your nails with the inside of my throat.

LELA (with that delicate lengthening of the face which, in a woman of taste, approximates a yawn) : My indifference to the inside of your throat amounts to a passion. (She takes a cigarette from the jade box at her side.)

GEORGE: That's probably because you feel just as terrible as I do. I'll bet you feel just as terrible as I do. Look at your hand— it's shaking like a leaf.

LELA looks at her hand, and then indignantly stops looking at it, transferring her pointed gaze to GEORGE, who is trying to get a match out of a small amethyst box from the table, lie spills all the matches on the floor and LELA, in triumphant silence, lights her cigarette with a lighter.

GEORGE (sitting down with resignation): How about one or six excellent cocktails, brewed by the sprightly Germaine? My throat—

LELA (wearily addressing the pastel walls) : It seems to me such a curious thing that men never call on a woman these days without bringing their lusts along with them. I should think that after practically a whole night spent in vile speakeasies, which are enough to ruin even ordinarily moral characters—

GEORGE (enthusiastically, almost with awe) : Aren't they the hotbeds of vice and depravity, though?

LELA : I should think that, after such a night, a man would welcome God's sunlight as a time in which to do better things, to exercise—

GEORGE: Well, I have got a punching-bag in my apartment; but I can't punch it when I get up in the mornings, because I feel too terrible then. So I punch it before I go to bed.

LELA (acidly) : In a top hat, I suppose?

GEORGE (nodding) : And a gardenia in the buttonhole. Doesn't it sound winsome?

LELA: It sounds disgusting and drunken . ..

GEORGE: Oh come now, little woman, don't pretend to me that when the champagne is passed your hands are folded; because that would do what is called "straining" what is known as my "credulity." Who was it who danced with the doorman outside of the Mink Club last night?

LELA: I'm sure I don't know. It certainly was not I.

GEORGE: Well, it certainly was! It all comes hack to me now . . . you said he had the most terrifying big blue eyes, just like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood; only you couldn't say Little Red Riding Hood, so you said Peter Pan instead. And you gave him your telephone number. You gave the doorman your telephone number, because he had big eyes like the wolf in Peter Pan.

LELA (in a startled voice) : Where were you all that time? (She closes her eyes to think, and the shadow's beneath them deepen a little; but when she opens them again, the shadows pale before the flame of indignation in their depth) Well, it all comes hack to me now. You were cruising around alone in a hansom cab—-looking for me, so you said afterward.

GEORGE: Looking for you? Darling, I couldn't have missed you!

LELA: Well, you were looking for me, just the same. In the hansom cab. Under the rubber mat.

GEORGE: That, my dear Lela, is a stark untruth. I haven't looked for anybody under the mat in a hansom cab since one night two years ago, when I found a live goldfish there. (He fixes her with a skeptical eye) And what, according to your version of last night, happened after that?

LELA (coldly): After that, I lost all interest in you.

GEORGE (bitterly): I'll say you did! You lost all interest in me to such an extent that I thought I was going to have to call a stretcher for you to go home on.

LELA rises in a furious silence that threatens to express itself in speech. Hut she is interrupted by the entrance of GERMAINE.

GERMAINE: Mr. Grayson is on the telephone, Madame.

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(Continued from page 59)

LELA: Tell him I'm not in.

GERMAINE: Me wanted to know. Madame, if you have your onyx cigarette-case.

LELA: What does he mean, have I got my onyx cigarette-case?

GEORGE: He probably means, have you got your onyx cigarette-case or has your onyx cigarette-case got you? Every woman is a slave to her possessions.

LELA: (impatiently, to GERMAINE) : Of course I have my onyx cigarette-case! It's in my hag, or somewhere . . . tell Mr. Grayson so, Germaine, 'fell him you see it lying before you.

GERMAINE goes out to the telephone, and returns impassively.

GERMAINE: Mr. Grayson says that it is very odd, Madame, that 1 see your onyx cigarette-case lying before me, because he has it in his pocket. lie says you gave it to him last night to keep for you, and he forgot to return it.

LELA: I gave it to him last night?Her eye wildly seeks the eye of GEORGE, who is frowning in what appears to be tortured thought.

GERMAINE: Mr. Grayson added, Madame, that he is now at Mrs. Gardner's for tea, but will come directly here in half-an-hour, and return the cigarette-case to you.

GEORGE: My God! Ellen Gardner!

LELA (after a slight pause) : Do you mean to say, George Rierdon, that you were out with Ellen Gardner last night and thought it was me because you were so—(she hesitates, trying to think of a delicate word meaning plastered)

GEORGE (dreamily) : Of course . . . it all comes hack to me now. Just as you were out with Ricky Grayson and thought—

LELA (with dignity) : There is a certain similarity between the name of Grayson and the name of Rierdon.

But GEORGE does not hear her. He is brooding with astonishment, with awe, almost with reverence upon this discovery of the exquisite chaos which is, evidently, his mind.

GEORGE: Well, well, well. It just goes to show what bootleg liquor will do for you!

There is a pause. Both LELA and GEORGE are relieved; all the mists are swept away, and everything made beautifully clear. The windows, the tulips in tall vases, the Vie Parisienne—all are shrouded in a blue twilight full of potentialities. Another evening is beginning.

LELA (brightly) : You can bring the cocktails now, Germaine.

GERMAINE goes out, and returns shortly with a glittering tray; and the CURTAIN slowly falls upon a room tranquil and fragrant with twilight, with tulips, and with alcohol.