Nothing. That’s why I revised you. TOM (_Bitterly_) Then why did you give me life at all? GRANT Because then I was fool enough to think the modern theater was a place for great creations. I recognize the conditions better now. TOM But in THE LONELY WAY you didn’t consider me a fool when _I_ continued to paint great pictures--in spite of conditions. GRANT You were a great artist in that play. TOM And when you drew me you were a great dramatist. (_Sadly_) Now I see you are only a playwright. GRANT And at the National Tom Robinson has become only a painter of pot-boilers. (_Mockingly_) You’ve certainly come down in the world. TOM I don’t need your pity; but I want you to realize that what you did to me you also did to yourself. When you made me fall, I brought you down with me. (_He shakes the manuscript before him._) Look! I had life there in a powerful play. GRANT I won’t dispute that. It was fine: beautifully articulated in its subtlety. TOM That just describes it. It was nearly as fine as my Sumatra Sunlight or even my Russian Nocturne. GRANT Which you never sold. TOM But what is painted lives for the future. GRANT Don’t be sensitive: my LONELY WAY is still here. Nobody would produce it. TOM Yet you cared for nobody when you made me live in it--perfect as the frame that held me. The strength you gave me in my own relentlessness was also yours. You glowed when you wrote it; as you made me glow when I painted. You felt the joy which only a creator knows when beauty and perfection slowly struggle out of his inner vision. GRANT But, my dear fellow.... TOM Wait. Contrast this play with THE SAND BAR! With your skill as a builder you turned what was a lonely palace on a peak--aflame with my art--into a scrambly suburban residence where miserable ordinary people function. You produced a miserable makeshift of a play and made Tom Robinson a miserable makeshift of a man. (_Accusing him._) But when you played tricks on me you played tricks on yourself. That’s what you did when you took from Tom Robinson his genius and made him paint pot-boilers at the National. Pot-boilers! Pot-boilers! Me!! Good God, man, did you know what you were doing when you rewrote this play? GRANT (_Slowly_) I knew exactly what I was doing. I was turning it into a popular success. TOM (_Outraged_) You had not even the excuse of self-deception? GRANT No. TOM (_Eyeing him strangely_) Then you are worse off than we thought! GRANT _We?_ TOM I wonder how far you have fallen! I shall be patient till we see the depths of your artistic degradation. GRANT You said “we”? A WOMAN’S VOICE (_Outside_) Yes. We. (GRANT _gives a start towards the door, thinking the voice has come from his wife’s room_.) TOM Oh, that isn’t your wife. GRANT Then if you’ve some friend concealed about your person, hadn’t you better produce her? TOM That isn’t my friend; that’s my wife. GRANT