A slight man with heavy sparse-haired head on thin shoulders, frail chest, spoke in a singing voice. His English was good, the Irish brogue was thick. “It’s this way--it’s this way. We sit here night after night and we have a good time. What is it we do really? We destroy ourselves, and that means we hurt less. We drug ourselves down to these parts of life which are happy.” “Man is not happy?” “Man,” Daniel Scome went on, “is caught between the fulness of the brute and the fulness of manhood. That’s where we are. We’re half way. And we’re weary and comfortless. Where we are we suffer. We cannot rest. We cannot forget. Because we are half way. We must go on, to a new happiness: or we must go back.” “That’s what we do,” said Mangel. “We go back....” A voice came from the shadow: “We got laws and governments ... we got arts and War, so we can go back comfortably. Yes.” “We’re corrupted. Adam and Eve have damned us,” spoke the thrust, sure of itself, of Statt. “We don’t slump back. We’re naturally brutes.” “I don’t believe you!” cried Mangel. “Of course you don’t. You ain’t a Christian.” “Nor you!” said Daniel Scome. “If we were naturally brutes, God would not bother about us.” “Nor we about God,” said Fanny. “It comes to the same thing. We are half way, I tell you. We got to push on ... or we got to fall back.” Tessie sighed. “I am tired. I don’t want to do anything.” “And I am tired too,” Susan chimed in. “So I don’t do anything. I don’t climb. I don’t fall. I’d like to see anyone of you budge me!” “But you climb,” said Fanny softly: Susan did not hear. “You are all cold with climbing....” In the corner beside Statt, shadowed, sat a tall spare creature with a knot of hair on a high fanatical brow, and eyes that burned blue in the dark. “Sing then!” said he. His name was Loyden. If he had another name, no one there knew it. “If you’re tired, sing. If you want to go up, sing. If you want to fall back, sing!” “Boy, you are crazy,” said Mangel. LOYDEN: I didn’t say I wasn’t. You aren’t logical. I said, _sing_! That has nothing to do with crazy or not crazy. FANNY: But if we want to be sane-- SCOME: We want to be too many things. Loyden’s right. We want the truth--and we’re afraid of being mad. There we are caught, again, half way--half way between what is really One. LOYDEN: We’re not caught when we sing ... not when we dance-- STATT: You old scarecrow, what are you preaching about? Who ever heard your voice? Who ever saw you shake a leg? LOYDEN: I have forgotten how to--without the Music. TESSIE: Don’t talk about music! You get on my nerves. LOYDEN: You see? It gets on her nerves. The weakling. Music oozed out of her, died down to her hands. And when they got twisted, it went away. SCOME: We don’t know how to dance. That’s why we’re here, drinking and loving women. SUSAN: You don’t love us! CLARA: (muttering) Only a woman can love a woman. LOYDEN: We don’t know how to dance. Dance for us, Judge Mark. MARK: Shut up!