That’s what critics are for. MARIE So don’t try to make my temper seem trivial, Mr. Williams. I valued it. It gave me a chance to assert myself. It kept me alive as an individual. In THE LONELY WAY, while I was his wife, you made my whole fight to keep from being swamped by his personality. TOM As a married man yourself, Williams, you know damn well that women have got to capitulate in marriage. We husbands have got to close the door on them when they don’t understand us. MARIE (_Contemptuously_) And in THE SAND BAR, Marie didn’t have the courage to take the things of life that lay outside the door! She didn’t dare, like me, because you’d changed _her_ into a sweet simpering woman who loved her husband. TOM But the Tom Robinson she loved there isn’t the Tom Robinson you see here. MARIE No. The other is a hero! He’s a halo on legs. GRANT Your ignorance of theatrical conditions is appalling. THE SAND BAR _had_ to have a happy ending. If I hadn’t made you both charming the public wouldn’t have believed in your ultimate happiness together. TOM (_Bringing his hand down on the table_) Now we’re getting at it. Why the devil did you bring us together? GRANT (_Trying to explain elementally_) Because I’d turned you into the hero and you into the heroine. They must always come together for the final curtain. MARIE But I wasn’t a heroine. TOM No. She’s right there. MARIE (_Emotionally_) I was a bitter, disillusionized woman. I saw how Tom Robinson succeeded in getting out of life what he wanted by being relentless. I, too, became relentless and married Pendleton Case because he could give me what _I_ most wanted. GRANT (_Beginning from now on to lose his patience_) Yes; but that was too unsympathetic a motive to use in a popular play. So I _had_ to make Pendleton Case a villain who took advantage of your trust in him. MARIE But Penny was only a poor gullible fool consumed by my egotism. Why were you so unfair to him? Why did you make him a villain? TOM Yes. I want to know why you gave him all my vices? GRANT If Case hadn’t had all your vices, Marie wouldn’t have had all the sympathy. MARIE I didn’t want sympathy; I wanted clothes! GRANT (_Confused_) But the leading lady has to, have sympathy even without clothes. I mean---- TOM (_Quickly_) Do you mean that the reason you made me sacrifice my art in THE SAND BAR and rescue her from Case was because she had to have sympathy? GRANT Exactly. And, besides, how was an audience going to know you were a hero unless you sacrificed something? TOM But I’m not a hero: I’m an artist. You know the real reason I got rid of her was because she stood in the way of my art; because I wouldn’t let a single human responsibility weaken the vision within me. MARIE Wasn’t that reason enough why I should leave him? GRANT But that was too abstract an idea for the audience to get. MARIE So you turned an abstraction into a villain! GRANT