Why Marry? Part 4

LUCY

I can guess the rest.

JEAN

Why, it didn't take five minutes.

LUCY

And now it's to last through all eternity.... Isn't love wonderful?

JEAN

Um-hum. Wonderful.

[_They begin to cull out the flowers._

LUCY

But you do love him, dear, don't you?

JEAN

[_arranging flowers_]

I did then. I don't now. Why is that, Lucy?

LUCY

Oh, but you will learn to love him. [_Jean shrugs, drops flowers, and turns away._] Now, now! no worrying--it brings wrinkles! [_Patting Jean's shoulder._] Rex is just the sort to give the woman he adores everything in the world.

JEAN

[_wriggling out of LUCY'S embrace_]

I am not the woman he adores.

LUCY

Why, Jean! He's engaged to you.

JEAN

But he's in love with my sister. You know that as well as I do.

LUCY

[_uncomfortably_]

Oh, well, he was once, but not now. Men admire these independent women, but they don't marry them. n.o.body wants to marry a s.e.xless freak with a scientific degree.

JEAN

Oh, what's the use, Lucy? He's still wild about Helen, and she still laughs at him. So you and John have trotted out the little sister. Why not be honest about it.

LUCY

Well, I may be old-fas.h.i.+oned, but I don't think it's nice to talk this way when you're just engaged.

JEAN

Here comes your "s.e.xless freak"--not with a degree, either.

LUCY

[_following JEAN'S gaze_]

With a man!

JEAN

[_smiling_]

With _my_ man.

[_HELEN, with REX bending toward her eagerly, appears. She is a beautiful woman of twenty-nine, tall, strong, glorious--plenty of old-fas.h.i.+oned charm, despite her new-fas.h.i.+oned ideas. She is dressed in a tennis costume and is swinging a racquet._

REX

But they told me you were going to stay abroad all winter.

HELEN