bending gently in the breeze from the ocean. The sand was warm to our feet and made a strange crunching sound as we walked. For awhile we didn't speak as we spread our blankets, stored the cans of beer in the cool sand and unpacked the lunch from the cardboard boxes. There was a long silence then as we lay listening to the sound of the waves and the cry of an occasional gull that flew over these desolate stretches of sand. I shall never forget the feeling that came then-a feeling of completeness. All awareness of time and place slipped away. This was a feeling I had tried many times to capture when I was exhausted with rehearsals or trying to master new lines in an incredibly short time, or when I was merely depressed, moody, or discouraged. But never before had the feeling been so real. Í had almost forgotten Marvin when he turned to me and said,

"You're a different person."

I wasn't sure what he meant.

"In what way, different?" I asked.

"You're not the same person I met at the theatre three weeks ago. You've changed just since we've been lying here."

"Perhaps that's because I'm happy." I tried to make it sound flippant but I was sure he knew I meant it.

"I hope so, because this means a great deal to me." He sounded serious. "We've both been under a tough strain these past few weeks." Then he began to talk, not seeming to care if I listened but just feeling the need to express something. He told how he had worked with a New England stock company, fallen in love with one of the young apprentices and, being younger then, did not realize the importance of discretion. The director, a frustrated ego-maniac, created a scandal which forced Marvin to leave the company. He told this in a quiet voice with no trace of anger or resentment.

He had left New England and gone to the west coast where he worked as a salesman in the men's department of a large store. Then he began to act again with a well-known experimental theatre in the west. But the need for change drove him away and that was why he was here. He felt he had to show people that he was a fine actor and, what was more important, an acceptable person. Once that was done, he could not stay in the same place.

For awhile he was silent, and then he said,

"I don't know why I've told you all this. I don't usually talk this much."

I took his hand and said I was very glad that he had. Then he gave me a long, searching look and said, holding my hand close,

"Don't fall in love with me. Please!" I was surprised because now that he had said it, I realized that was precisely what I was doing. All kinds of thoughts came into my head. I wanted to say how conceited I thought he was and what did he think I was, a school-boy? But I said none of these things. I remembered a line from CYRANO.

999

"There is a line by Rostand where Cyrano gives the sister permission to pray for his soul and she replies, 'I did not wait for your permission." Neither of us spoke for a moment and then he said,

"I'm afraid we are to have just this one day-an interlude or intermezzo if you will." He smiled then and I would not allow his words to form their meaning. "You see, we both must go back to the theatre and when the season is over, I am going home to my wife and child." At the look on my face, he said, "Yes, I have a wife and a son nine years old. We adopted him when he was just a baby." I told myself that this did not matter; that I envied him his family. I told myself many things but never admitted the truth: I loved him as I had never loved before or

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