You
can't stay crazy about a man when you give him half your salary
every week. You get to hate him.... Oh, it's worse than hate. It's
contempt.
LAURA. You've stuck it out so long.
KATE. Too long.
LAURA. It'll be different as soon as he strikes something.
KATE. Strikes what? Gold or oil?
LAURA. He'll find something. It takes time.
KATE. Time is the only thing I haven't got to spare. Look, I'm
twenty-seven.
LAURA. But you don't look it.
KATE. I do--I have wrinkles.
LAURA. Don't be silly.
KATE. Around the eyes.
LAURA. You're imagining.
KATE. And yesterday I found a gray hair.
LAURA. Girls of eighteen sometimes have gray hairs.
KATE. But I feel old! And if I don't look it now, I will soon.
[_Pause._] What am I to do, Laura? Keep on working at eighteen
dollars a week till I'm forty?--I haven't a decent thing to wear.
I haven't had a new coat in three years. [_Feverishly._] And I'm
frightened. Calendars frighten me.--I want to have some fun. I want
a man to take me to the Ritz and--pay the check.
LAURA. I know how you feel. Don't you think that I ... What do you
want me to say, Kate?
KATE. There is nothing to say.
LAURA. Look, dear. I don't say you should keep Ted. Drop him and go
it alone a while. If you've been living on nine dollars a week,
eighteen will seem a fortune.
KATE. And what will become of him?
LAURA.
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