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Rosemary and Alice appear to be expectant. Alice is self-possessed, yet in a position unmistakably subordinate to Rosemary, as if she were a lady-in-waiting. Rosemary has become transformed, but the nature of the transformation is undefined. The two women occupy the stage so completely that it takes some time before it is realized that Man is present.
MAN Shall we go on?
ROSEMARY (shudders as if momentarily chilled by a disagreeable emotion) I don't know. I don't think I can stand all that again. I am sorry, but I feel I have had enough of it.
MAN I said, ‘shall we go on?’ I was not suggesting ‘more’ of the same again.
ROSEMARY I feel old. Do men never grow up?
MAN Usually they are not allowed to, either by themselves or the women they choose, or both. I am sorry for that poor devil, Robin. He is not a bad sort. He has been very close to death! Often I thought he was hopeless and then he seemed at the last moment – to my surprise, I confess it – to topple over on the right side. It is like watching a leaf falling to the ground; utterly unpredictable, but like playing a game with fate. ‘Heads I lose; tails I win’, but with a coinage inadequate for the purpose. It would be more accurate to say that leaves are adequate to occupy the role of representing coinage, itself a representation, in that they permit certain forces to participate in the game, notably the air and its movements. These forces may be regarded …
ROSEMARY (shuddering against his intervention) Don't.
MAN Again? I see what you mean …
(Both fade out, and it gradually becomes clear that the darkness is not total. Nor is the silence absolute. Voices resemble, but are not, a conversation; memories resemble, but are not, desires; finite episodes resemble, but are not,
infinite. There appears to be a streaming in one direction, but the direction changes as if it were, but is not, ‘reversed perspective’. ‘Larling’, she does not say. It is not past: it does not feel past either. It is inchoate, it is not past. It is