The Professor
(Lying on the floor, close to the wall.) Ah, if I could only escape! I was thinking a while ago that life was a shadow of something else, an adumbration, a thing built up point by point like the dots of a telautographed picture. Now if that were so I could get out of here. It would be a dream. I could wake. I could cry “Avaunt!” I could stir and it would all disappear and become as nothing. But here! Here—(he pauses and stares. A company of dream soldiers on horseback gallop up and swing a cannon into position.)