Of course, inasmuch as you let us in for it in the first place.
Oh, do keep that note out of your voice, Tracy. It's very unattractive.
Oh? How does your dancer friend talk? Or does she purr?
Tracy!
Oh, it's quite all right, Margaret.
Sweet and low, I suppose. Dulcet, very lady-like. You've got a heck of a nerve to come back here in your best-head-of-the-family manner and make stands and strike attitudes and criticize my fiancee and give orders and mess things up generally...
Stop it instantly!
I can't help it. It's sickening. As if he'd done nothing at all!
Which happens to be the truth.
Anyway, it's not your affair, Tracy, if it concerns anyone. Well actually, I don't know whom it concerns except your father.
That's very wise of you, Margaret. What most wives fail to realize is that their husband's philandering has nothing whatever to do with them.
Oh? Then, what has it to do with?
A reluctance to grow old, I think. I suppose the best mainstay a man can have as he gets along in years is a daughter - the right kind of daughter.
How sweet!
No, no. I'm talking seriously about something I've thought over thoroughly. I've had to. I think a devoted young girl gives a man the illusion that youth is still his.
Very important, I suppose.
Oh, very, very. Because without her, he might be inclined to go out in search of his youth. And that's just as important to him as it is to any woman. But with a girl of his own full of warmth for him, full of foolish, unquestioning, uncritical affection -
None of which I've got -
None. You have a good mind, a pretty face, a disciplined body that does what you tell it to. You have everything it takes to make a lovely woman except the one essential - an understanding heart. And without that, you might just as well be made of bronze.
That's an awful thing to say to anyone.
Yes, it is indeed.
So, I'm to blame for Tina Mara, am I?
To a certain extent, I expect you are.
You coward.
No. But better that than a prig or a perennial spinster, however many marriages.
Seth, that's too much.
I'm afraid it's not enough, Margaret. I'm afraid nothing is.
What, what did you say I was?
Do you want me to repeat it?
'A prig and a...' You mean, you think I think I'm some kind of a goddess or something?
If your ego wants it that way, yes. Also, you've been talking like a jealous woman.
'A...' What's the matter with everyone all at once, anyhow?
