Stella:
I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away...I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in Dannemora.'
Jeff:
Yeah, right now I'd welcome trouble...You know, I think you're right. I think there is going to be trouble around here.
Stella:
...What kind of trouble?
Jeff:
Lisa Fremont.
Stella:
Are you kidding? She's a beautiful young girl and you're a reasonably healthy young man.
Jeff:
She expects me to marry her.
Stella:
That's normal.
Jeff:
I don't want to.
Stella:
That's abnormal.
Jeff:
I'm just not ready for marriage.
Stella:
Every man's ready for marriage when the right girl comes along. And Lisa Fremont is the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open.
Jeff:
Oh, she's all right.
Stella:
What did you do? Have a fight?
Jeff:
No.
Stella:
Her father loading up the shotgun?
Jeff:
What? Please, Stella.
Stella:
It's happened before you know. Some of the world's happiest marriages have, uh, started under the gun, as you might say.
Jeff:
No, she's just not the girl for me.
Stella:
Yeah, she's only perfect.
Jeff:
She's too perfect. She's too talented, she's too beautiful. She's too sophisticated. She's too everything but what I want.
Stella:
Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
Jeff:
Well, it's very simple, Stella. She belongs to that rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue, you know. Expensive restaurants, literary cocktail parties...Can you imagine her tramping around the world with a camera bum who never has more than a week's salary in the bank? If she was only ordinary.
Stella:
You ever gonna get married?
Jeff:
I'll probably get married one of these days, and when I do, it's gonna be to someone who thinks of life not just as a new dress, and a lobster dinner, the latest scandal. I need a woman who's willing...to go anywhere and do anything and love it. So the honest thing for me to do is just to call the whole thing off and let her find somebody else.
Stella:
Yeah, I can hear you now. Get out of my life. You're a perfectly wonderful woman - you're too good for me. Look, Mr. Jefferies, I'm not an educated woman, but I can tell you one thing. When a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham! Like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle.
Jeff:
There's an intelligent way to approach marriage.
Stella:
Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence. Hah! Modern marriage!
