- Robert Phelps: What are you going to do? Now?
- Hester: I don't know. Yes, I do too know. I'm going to marry an orphan!
- Christina Phelps: Have you ever thought what it'd be like to be trapped in a submarine in an accident? I've learned tonight what kind of panic that would be like. I'm in that kind of panic now. This minute.
- Mrs. Phelps: Now, tell me about your job. I don't like to say profession. That has such a sinister sound for a woman.
- Mrs. Phelps: I used to watch David and Robert's photographs, just as I did their weight. I felt that I wanted a record of the development of their little minds and souls, as well as, their bodies. So, they were photographed every three months until they were 12 years old.
- Hester: Good heavens! What an awful lot of photographs.
- David Phelps: Now mother will be getting out the old family album. I remember one of me sitting in a shell.
- Christina Phelps: In the nude?
- Mrs. Phelps: I've always suspected there was insanity in her family. She had a brother who was an aviator in the war. Everybody knows aviators are lunatics.
- Christina Phelps: Oh, there are normal mothers around. Mothers who want their children to be men and women and take care of themselves. Mothers who look on their children as *people* and enjoy them as people. Not be forever holding on them and pawing them and fussing about their health, tucking them up as if they're everlasting babies.
- Christina Phelps: You belong to a type that is very common in these days, Mrs. Phelps. A type of self-centered, self-pitying, son devouring tigress.
- Mrs. Phelps: I offer a mother's love. I bet you scoff at that.
- Christina Phelps: Not if it's kept within bounds. I expect to love my baby with as much and as deep respect as I hope my baby will feel for me - if I deserve its respect. To love my baby unpossessively and, above all, unromantically.
- Christina Phelps: Oh, Dave, it looks as though this experiment's really coming out right. Aren't you happy?
- David Phelps: You bet I am. Say, how about a slight demonstration of affection?
- [Christina gives him a long kiss]
- David Phelps: Mmm. Not bad for a cold blooded scientist.
- German Doctor: I knew it. I knew it five months ago when you two were married, that this is going to happen. Young man, you are taking away my prized pupil. She has a rare gift and she throws it away for love. Huh, for love.
- Christina Phelps: Oh no, Doctor. I can go on with my work. At the Rockefeller Institute. I had an offer there two months ago.
- German Doctor: And you never told me. Well, that's very good! Go to the Rockefeller Institute. Keep up your work! You are the kind that can have both: a husband and a job. Some women cannot; but, you - you can.
- Christina Phelps: Why you darling!
- Hester: Hello. You're David and Christina, aren't you? I'm Hester.
- David Phelps: You're not. Well. Look, Chris. Here's Hester, who's going to marry my brother, Rob.
- Christina Phelps: Isn't she lovely.
- [reaches out to hold Hester's hands]
- Hester: I think you're dears, both of you.
- [kisses Christina on the lips]
- Mrs. Phelps: Take your hat off, so that I can *really* see you. I've never seen a lady scientist before.
- Mrs. Phelps: In my day, we considered a girl immensely courageous and independent who taught school or - who gave music lessons. But, nowadays, girls sell real estate and become *scientists* - and think nothing of it. Give us our due, Christina. We weren't all bustles and smelling salts. We girls who did not go out into the the world, we made a great profession, which I fear is in some danger of vanishing from the face of the earth. We made a profession - of motherhood. That may sound old fashioned to you. Believe me, it had its value.
- Mrs. Phelps: Now, now tell me about your plans. If you have any plans. I hope you haven't; because, I've been making so many for you - and such *perfect* ones.
- Christina Phelps: Dave and I met in Rome last winter. And then he came to Heidelberg where I was working.
- Hester: Now, what I say about children is this: have 'em, love 'em, and then leave 'em be.
- Christina Phelps: I'm not so sure that isn't a very profound remark.
- [Mrs. Phelps politely smiles]
- Hester: The truth is I used to think quite often that one of my beaus was coming to the point. But, none of them ever did.
- Robert Phelps: Why not?
- Hester: Oh, I don't think it was entirely lack of allure, Rob.
- Hester: You're a queer one.
- Robert Phelps: You think so? How?
- Hester: As a lover. I've never seen another like you.
- Mrs. Phelps: You think I'm selfish. If there's one thing I pride myself on: I'm not selfish. I haven't a selfish hair in my head.
- Hester: You just leave things to me. If we're poor, I'll - I'll cook and scrub floors. I'll bring up our children. I'll take care of you whether we live in New York or - Kamchatka.
- Hester: I don't know if I quite share your enthusiasm for children.
- Robert Phelps: You will.
- Hester: Well, they don't exactly help a career, you know.
- Robert Phelps: Oh, have you got a career?
- Hester: Well, I fully intend to have one.
- Robert Phelps: Oh, I'm glad. What kind?
- Hester: Well, I - I'm not quite sure. I can draw pretty well and I'm not a bad musician - I might decide to compose. I might even write! I've often thought of it.
- Christina Phelps: You'll see that things come straight, somehow, and turn out for the best. Life takes care of those things. All we have to do is just keep out of life's way and make the best of things.
- Mrs. Phelps: You are the only person in the world who's ever forced me to do an undignified thing. I shall not forget.
- Christina Phelps: The third time I refused Dave, he asked me for a reason. And I told him, I couldn't throw myself away on a big frog in a small puddle.
- Mrs. Phelps: Yes, but, you don't mean - you want him a small frog, a mere pollywog, in a great ocean like New York?
- Christina Phelps: Yes, I'm afraid that's just what I do mean.
- David Phelps: I hope you're going to behave. You ought to be ashamed - when you know how much my mother means to me.
- Christina Phelps: Your mother! Your mother! Always your mother!
- Christina Phelps: I've got to get this off my chest. Ever since we've been married, I've been coming across queer riffs in your feeling for me.
- Mrs. Phelps: Now, isn't your mother your best friend?
- David Phelps: You bet you are, Mommy.
- Mrs. Phelps: Oh, how long its been since you've called me that. Bless you my dear, dear boy
- [leans down to David lying in his bed and kisses him on the lips]
- Mrs. Phelps: I won't have to be lonely now. I won't have to be lonely now.
- Robert Phelps: No, mother. No.
- Mrs. Phelps: Kiss me.
- [leans down to Robert, who has his head on her bosom, and kisses him on the lips]
- David Phelps: The whole purpose of this visit was to bring you and mother together. To prove to mother that a lady scientist may not be as bad as she sounds.
- Christina Phelps: You won't listen. You can't even hear me.
- David Phelps: I can hear you and a worst line of hooey I've never listened to in all my life.
- Mrs. Phelps: What is it you're about to say, Hester?
- Hester: Why, I was just looking at Christina's dress and I was just about to say, well, of all the lovely dresses I've ever seen, that's the loveliest.
- Christina Phelps: Yes, it is nice, isn't it.
- Mrs. Phelps: I know who that dress would look well on. Dave, do you remember Clara Judd? What a exquisite figure Clara always had and such distinction. That dress needs distinctions and a figure.
- David Phelps: What do you expect me to say?
- Christina Phelps: I don't know. I've never known. That's been the thrill of it.
- Christina Phelps: If my baby ever feels toward me, the way your sons feel toward you, I hope someone will take a little enameled pistol and shoot me, because, I'll deserve it.
- Mrs. Phelps: Everyone said I'd made a great match. And I thought I had. But, before I'd been married a week, I saw all my illusions shattered. I knew at the end of a week how miserable and unhappy my marriage was. He was good to me. He made very few demands on me. But, he never dreamed of bringing the least atom of happiness or romance into my life. Only a woman who's lived without romance knows how to value it. And that isn't true of my life. I didn't live without romance. I found it. And I'm proud to have found it where you say it doesn't belong - in motherhood. I found it in my two babies.
- David Phelps: If you'd only leave things be, they'll be all right, you may believe it or not.
- Christina Phelps: I can't believe it and I can't leave things be.