But I’m not an artist: I’m one of your creations. Have _I_ no rights? Must I be turned into a trained poodle and do tricks for money? GRANT You are only a phantom, a projection, a figment. MARIE (_With great indignation_) You call me a figment? TOM (_Rising ominously_) I’m tired of hearing you insult your own flesh and blood. GRANT I disowned you both when I rewrote you. I was thinking then of only one thing: the public. TOM Liar! You _did_ deceive yourself! You were thinking of your wife and child. MARIE (_Seeing_ GRANT _is startled_) That gets you. You did this to us for them. GRANT (_Himself serious now throughout_) Yes. I was thinking of them most of all. MARIE Yet when you created Tom Robinson in THE LONELY WAY you did not let him think of _his_ wife and child. TOM That’s where I was bigger than you, Grant Williams! GRANT You mean more brutal. TOM Mush. Mush. You can’t hide behind that. (_Impressively._) I am you! I could never have lived had I not been a wish hidden in yourself. I am what you would have been if you had dared! GRANT How dare you say a thing like that? I made you. I knew you inside and out. TOM But you didn’t know yourself. _I_ knew when you wrote me that you wanted to be as relentless as you made me. GRANT I hated you. I hated every bone beneath your miserable hide! TOM (_With a triumphant smile_) That only proves it! You were afraid to be yourself; so you created me! GRANT (_Shrinking back_) No.... No.... TOM You forget people have made gods and devils out of their own dreams to worship and hate. Look at me, through the mask you gave me, and see yourself! I was the worst of what was human in you--the devil side of you: I was the best of what was the artist in you--the God within you! GRANT (_As though stunned by the thought_) God and devil. No.... No.... MARIE (_Seriously_) Now I see how _I_ came into being. I was your wife, as part of you saw her! (_He protests._) She was in your way, as I was in his way. You made Tom close the door on me because, deep in your soul, you wished to close it on her. She never understood. GRANT Stop. You shan’t go any further. She stood by me through all these years of poverty. She loves me and understands. MARIE (_Relentlessly_) But you thought her a fool for loving you. You really thought she ought to go. You wanted her to go, I tell you. You wanted her to see that your art meant more to you than her love. But you didn’t have the courage to do to her what you made him do to me! GRANT (_To_ TOM) Take her away! I won’t let her say these things. I did what I did to you for Jerry’s sake. I wanted to make money so _she_ would be happy. I couldn’t stand it to see her hands grow rough.... TOM (_Contemptuously_) Bosh! Art denies all human responsibility. You made me face that truth with my wife, and when I threw her out I was _your_ own inner answer to that eternal question! GRANT I tell you my love for her is greater than for my art.