I’ll put on my old wrapper, for the last time, and wait up for you. I’m going to get a real négligée to-morrow. Your favorite color. GRANT I won’t be long. This is an awful bore and I’m tired. (_He begins to pound out something on his machine._ JERRY _goes over to hang up his coat, and as she does so, a newspaper clipping falls out of his pocket, on the floor. She picks it up unnoticed by_ GRANT. _She glances at it; starts angrily to speak to_ GRANT _about it; but seeing he is absorbed, hesitates and then conceals it. She hangs up the coat, comes around back of him as though to speak--but changes her mind. She kisses him. As she passes the table, she knocks off the manuscript of a play. She picks it up._) GRANT What’s that? JERRY The manuscript of THE LONELY WAY. (_He looks over at it, with a cynical smile._) You’ve learned a lot about playwrighting since you wrote that, haven’t you, dear? GRANT Yes--a lot. JERRY (_Tentatively_) You used to say it was the best thing you ever did. GRANT How did you happen to come across it? JERRY I found it behind the chest when I was cleaning. GRANT Oh, yes; I remember. I threw it there the day of my great decision: The day I made up my mind to rewrite it and call it THE SAND BAR. JERRY (_As she glances over the pages_) Grant. I’m not going to lose you now that you’re a success? GRANT What ever put such a foolish idea in your head? JERRY You remember the Tom Robinson you drew in this play? All you made him think of was his art; he even threw away his wife to make a success of it. GRANT That was because his wife didn’t understand. Besides, dear, you know how much I altered my original conception of their characters and completely changed the plot. Look how different it all is in THE SAND BAR. JERRY And you think your changes made the play truer to life? In real life a Tom Robinson wouldn’t have got rid of her? GRANT I don’t think anything’s ever going to come between us, if that’s what you mean. JERRY Of course not. (_Putting the manuscript on table, relieved, as she sees him resume his typing._) But I felt so sure of you when we were poor. Perhaps it was because you couldn’t afford to be wild. (_She turns off the switch and goes out. The room is lighted only by the desk lamp, casting its shadows into the corners of the room. He takes a cigarette from the box on the table, and as he smokes he reads half to himself what he has written._) GRANT “An author’s characters grow into life out of his observation and experience. Once they are conceived by these two parents their first heart beats are the taps of the author’s typewriter.” Good. “Gradually they grow into living men and women. They live with him, yet with a life of their own. In writing THE SAND BAR I ... I....”