THE DAUGHTER. This is worse than I thought it!
THE LAWYER. [Kindly] Yes, you see how hard it is—And the child that was to become a link and a blessing—it becomes our ruin.
THE DAUGHTER. Dearest, I die in this air, in this room, with its backyard view, with its baby cries and endless hours of sleeplessness, with those people out there, and their whinings, and bickerings, and incriminations—I shall die here!
THE LAWYER. My poor little flower, that has no light and no air——
THE DAUGHTER. And you say that people exist who are still worse off?
THE LAWYER. I belong with the envied ones in this locality.
THE DAUGHTER. Everything else might be borne if I could only have some beauty in my home.
THE LAWYER. I know you are thinking of flowers—and especially of heliotropes—but a plant costs half a dollar, which will buy us six quarts of milk or a peck of potatoes.
THE DAUGHTER. I could gladly get along without food if I could only have some flowers.
THE LAWYER. There is a kind of beauty that costs nothing—but the absence of it in the home is worse than any other torture to a man with a sense for the beautiful.