He: (Suddenly) I don’t want to fall in love with you——
She: (Raising her eyebrows) Nobody asked you to.
He: (Continuing coldly) But I probably will. I love your mouth.
She: Hush! Please don’t fall in love with my mouth—hair, eyes, shoulders, slippers—but not my mouth. Everybody falls in love with my mouth.
He: It’s quite beautiful.
She: It’s too small.
He: No it isn’t—let’s see.
(He kisses her again with the same thoroughness.)
She: (Rather moved) Say something sweet.
He: (Frightened) Lord help me.
She: (Drawing away) Well, don’t—if it’s so hard.
He: Shall we pretend? So soon?
She: We haven’t the same standards of time as other people.
He: Already it’s—other people.
She: Let’s pretend.
He: No—I can’t—it’s sentiment.
She: You’re not sentimental?
He: No, I’m romantic—a sentimental person thinks things will last—a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t. Sentiment is emotional.
She: And you’re not? (With her eyes half-closed.) You probably flatter yourself that that’s a superior attitude.
He: Well—Rosalind, Rosalind, don’t argue—kiss me again.
She: (Quite chilly now) No—I have no desire to kiss you.
He: (Openly taken aback) You wanted to kiss me a minute ago.
She: This is now.
He: I’d better go.
She: I suppose so.
(He goes toward the door.)
She: Oh!
(He turns.)
She: (Laughing) Score—Home Team: One hundred—Opponents: Zero.
(He starts back.)
She: (Quickly) Rain—no game.
(He goes out.)
(She goes quietly to the chiffonier, takes out a cigarette-case and hides it in the side drawer of a desk. Her mother enters, note-book in hand.) Mrs. Connage: Good—I’ve been wanting to speak to you alone before we go down-stairs.
Rosalind: Heavens! you frighten me!
Mrs. Connage: Rosalind, you’ve been a very expensive proposition.
Rosalind: (Resignedly) Yes.
Mrs. Connage: And you know your father hasn’t what he once had.
Rosalind: (Making a wry face) Oh, please don’t talk about money.
Mrs. Connage: You can’t do anything without it. This is our last year in this house—and unless things change Cecelia won’t have the advantages you’ve had.
Rosalind: (Impatiently) Well—what is it?
Mrs. Connage: So I ask you to please mind me in several things I’ve put down in my note-book. The first one is: don’t disappear with young men. There may be a time when it’s valuable, but at present I want you on the dance-floor where I can find you. There are certain men I want to have you meet and I don’t like finding you in some corner of the conservatory exchanging silliness with any one—or listening to it.
Rosalind: (Sarcastically) Yes, listening to it is better.
Mrs. Connage: And don’t waste a lot of time with the college set—little boys nineteen and twenty years old. I don’t mind a prom or a football game, but staying away from advantageous parties to eat in little cafés down-town with Tom, Dick, and Harry—— Rosalind: (Offering her code, which is, in its way, quite as high as her mother’s) Mother, it’s done—you can’t run everything now the way you did in the early nineties.
Mrs. Connage: (Paying no attention) There are several bachelor friends of your father’s that I want you to meet to-night—youngish men.
Rosalind: (Nodding wisely) About forty-five?
Mrs. Connage: (Sharply) Why not?
Rosalind: Oh, quite all right—they know life and are so adorably tired looking (shakes her head)—but they will dance.
Mrs. Connage: I haven’t met Mr. Blaine—but I don’t think you’ll care for him. He doesn’t sound like a money-maker.
Rosalind: Mother, I never think about money.
Mrs. Connage: You never keep it long enough to think about it.
Rosalind: (Sighs) Yes, I suppose some day I’ll marry a ton of it—out of sheer boredom.
Mrs. Connage: (Referring to note-book) I had a wire from Hartford. Dawson Ryder is coming up. Now there’s a young man I like, and he’s floating in money. It seems to me that since you seem tired of Howard Gillespie you might give Mr. Ryder some encouragement. This is the third time he’s been up in a month.
Rosalind: How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?
Mrs. Connage: The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes.
Rosalind: That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They’re all wrong.
Mrs. Connage: (Her say said) At any rate, make us proud of you to-night.
Rosalind: Don’t you think I’m beautiful?
Mrs. Connage: You know you are.
(From down-stairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll of a drum. Mrs. Connage turns quickly to her daughter.) Mrs. Connage: Come!
Rosalind: One minute!
(Her mother leaves. Rosalind goes to the glass where she gazes at herself with great satisfaction. She kisses her hand and touches her mirrored mouth with it. Then she turns out the lights and leaves the room. Silence for a moment. A few chords from the piano, the discreet patter of faint drums, the rustle of new silk, all blend on the staircase outside and drift in through the partly opened door. Bundled figures pass in the lighted hall. The laughter heard below becomes doubled and multiplied. Then some one comes in, closes the door, and switches on the lights. It is Cecelia. She goes to the chiffonier, looks in the drawers, hesitates—then to the desk whence she takes the cigarette-case and extracts one. She lights it and then, puffing and blowing, walks toward the mirror.) Cecelia: (In tremendously sophisticated accents) Oh, yes, coming out is such a farce nowadays, you know. One really plays around so much before one is seventeen, that it’s positively anticlimax. (Shaking hands with a visionary middle-aged nobleman.) Yes, your grace—I b’lieve I’ve heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff—they’re very good. They’re—they’re Coronas. You don’t smoke? What a pity! The king doesn’t allow it, I suppose. Yes, I’ll dance.
(So she dances around the room to a tune