ACT ONE
SCENE — JOHN LOVING’S private Office in the offices Of ELIOT AND COMPANY, New York City. On the left, a window. Before it, a chair, its back to the window, and a table. At rear of table, an armchair, facing front. A third chair is at right of table. In the rear wall, a door leading to the outer offices. At
center of the room, toward right, another chair. It is afternoon of a cloudy day in Spring, 1932. The light from the window is chill and gray. At the rise of the curtain, this light is concentrated around the two figures seated at the table. As the action goes on, the light imperceptibly spreads until, at the close of the opening scene between JOHN and LOVING, it has penetrated to all parts of the room. JOHN is seated in the chair at left of desk. He is forty, of medium height. His face is handsome, with the rather heavy, conventional American type of good looks-a straight nose and a square jaw, a wide mouth that has an incongruous feminine sensitiveness, a broad forehead, blue eyes. He is dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and collar, a dark tie, black shoes and socks.
LOVINGsits in the armchair at rear of table. He is the same age, of the same height and figure, is dressed in every detail exactly the same. His hair is the same — dark, streaked with gray. In contrast to this similarity between the two, there is an equally strange dissimilarity. For LOVING’s face is a mask whose
features reproduce exactly the features of JOHN’s face — the death mask of a JOHN who has died with a sneer of scornful mockery on his lips. And this mocking scorn is repeated in the expression of the eyes which stare bleakly from behind the mask.
JOHN nervously writes a few words on a pad — then stops abruptly and stares before him. LOVING watches him.
Aθdiacent 