CLAIRE: (_with one of her swift changes_) Oh, Harry! Try your egg
without salt. Please--please try it without salt! (_an intensity which
seems all out of proportion to the subject_)
HARRY: An egg demands salt.
CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an
unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'
HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.
CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.
HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (_going back to his breakfast_)
CLAIRE: And pleased--so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure,
it is just the right kind of spirit--because it gets no lift. (_more
brightly_) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.
DICK: I'll try it now. (_he goes to the breakfast table_)
CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one
leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?
HARRY: Claire.
DICK: (_pushing back his egg_) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.
HARRY: Claire, there is a _limit_.
CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a
limit. So--the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get
out, I suppose it is--quite unexpectedly, and perhaps--a bit terribly.
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