Cecilia —(Quietly ) I know where you keep your cigarettes and your little silver bottle.
Helen —(Starting so as to unloosen several hooks, which Cecilia patiently does over again ) Why, you horrible child! Do you go prying around among all my things?
Cecilia —All right, tell Mother.
Helen —What do you do, just go through my drawers like a common little sneak-thief?
Cecilia —No, I don’t. I wanted a handkerchief, and I went to looking and I couldn’t help seeing them.
Helen —That’s what comes of letting you children fool around with no chaperons, read anything you want to, and dance until two every Saturday night all summer. If it comes to that, I’ll tell something I saw that I didn’t say anything about. Just before we came into town, that night you asked me if you could take Blaine MacDonough home in the electric, I happened to be passing at the end of the drive by the club, and I saw him kiss you.
Cecilia —(Unmoved ) We were engaged.
Helen —(Frantically ) Engaged! You silly little fool! If any older people heard that you two were talking like that, you wouldn’t be allowed to go with the rest of your crowd.
Cecilia —That’s all right, but you know why you didn’t tell, because what were you doing there by the drive with John Cannel?
Helen —Hush! You little devil.
Cecilia —All right. We’ll call it square. I just started by wanting to tell you that Narry knows where those cigarettes are too.
Helen —(Losing her head ) You and Narry have probably been smoking them.
Cecilia —(Amused ) Imagine Narry smoking.
Helen —Well, you have been anyway.
Cecilia —You had better put them somewhere else.
Helen —I’ll put them where you can’t find them, and if you weren’t going back to school this week, I would go to Mother and tell her the whole thing.
Cecilia —Oh, no you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even do it for my good. You’re too selfish.
Helen, still very superior, marches into the next room. Cecilia goes softly to the door, slams it without going out, and disappears behind the bureau. She emerges tip-toe, takes a cushion from an arm chair, and retires again to her refuge. Helen again reappears. Almost immediately a whistle sounds outside, twice repeated. She looks annoyed and goes to the window .
Helen —John!
John —(From below ) Helen, can I see you a moment?
Helen —No, indeed. There are people all over the house. Mother would think I had gone mad if she saw us talking out of the window.
John —(Hopefully ) I’ll climb up.
Helen —John, don’t. You’ll tear your dress clothes. (He is evidently making good, as deduced from a few muttered fragments, barely audible .) Look out for the spike by the ledge. (A moment later he appears in the window, a young man of twenty-two, good-looking, but at present not particularly cheerful .)
Helen —(Sitting down ) You simple boy! Do you want the family to kill me? Do you realize how conspicuous you are?
John —(Hopefully ) I’d better come in.
Helen —No, you had better not. Mother may be up at any moment.
John —Better turn out the lights. I make a good movie standing like this on this ledge.
Helen hesitates and then turns out all the lights except an electric lamp on the dresser .
Helen —(Assuming an effective pose in the arm chair ) What on earth do you want?
John —I want you. I want to know that you are mine when I see you dancing around with this crowd tonight.
Helen —Well, I am not. I belong to myself tonight, or rather to the crowd.
John —You’ve been rotten to me this week.
Helen —Have I?
John —You’re tired of me.
Helen —No, not that. The family. (They have evidently been over this ground before .)
John —It isn’t the family, and you know it.
Helen —Well, to tell the truth, it isn’t exactly the family.
John —I know it isn’t. It’s me—and you, and I’m getting desperate. You’ve got to do something one way or the other. We are engaged, or—
Helen —Well, we are not engaged.
John —Then what are we? What do you think about me, or do you think about me? You never tell me anymore. We’re drifting apart. Please, Helen—!
Helen —It’s a funny business, John, just how I do feel.
John —It isn’t funny to me.
Helen —No, I don’t suppose it is. You know, if you just weren’t so in love with me—
John —(Gloomily ) Well, I am.
Helen —You see, there is no novelty in that. I always know just what you are going to say.
John —I wish I did. When you first met me, you used to tell me that you loved to hear me talk, because you never knew what I was going to say.
Helen —Well, I’ve found out. I like to run things, but it gets monotonous to always know that I am the key to the situation. If we are together, and I feel high, we enjoy ourselves. If I feel unhappy, then we don’t; or anyway you don’t. How you’re feeling never has anything to do with it.
John —Wouldn’t it be that way with most couples?
Helen —Oh, I suppose so. It would be if I were the girl.
John —Well, what do you want?
Helen —I want—Oh, I’ll be frank for once. I like the feeling of going after them. I like the thrill when you meet them and notice that they’ve got black hair that’s wavy, but awfully neat, or have dark lines under their eyes, and look charmingly dissipated, or have funny smiles that come and go and leave you wondering whether they smiled at all. Then I like the way they begin to follow you with their eyes. They’re interested. Good! Then I begin to place him. Try to get his type, find what he likes; right then the romance begins to lessen for me and increase for him. Then come a few long talks.
John —(Bitterly ) I remember.
Helen —Then, John, here’s the worst of it. There’s a point where everything changes.
John —(Mournfully interested ) What do you mean?
Helen —Well, sometimes it’s a kiss and sometimes it’s long before anything like that. Now if it’s a kiss, it can do one of three things.
John —Three! It’s done a thousand to me.
Helen —It can make him get tired of you, but a clever girl can avoid this. It’s only the young ones and the heroines of magazine epigrams that are kissed and deserted. Then there’s the second possibility. It can make you tired of him. This is usual. He immediately thinks of nothing but being alone with the girl, and she, rather touchy about the whole thing, gets snappy, and he’s first lovesick, then discouraged, and finally lost.
John —(More grimly ) Go on.
Helen —Then the third state is where the kiss really means something, where the girl lets go of herself and the man is in deadly earnest.
John —Then they’re engaged?
Helen —Exactly.
John —Weren’t we?
Helen —(Emphatically ) No,