George.  Well-for your throwing yourself away down there at Newcastle. 
You’re too good.

Minnie (with heat).  Throwing myself away?

George.  Didn’t you?  Didn’t you break loose?—­have a good time?

Minnie.  Why wouldn’t I have a good time?  That’s what you were having, —­a good time with me,—­wasn’t it?  And say, did you ever stop to think what one day of a working girl’s life was like?

George.  One day?

Minnie.  With an alarm clock scaring you out of sweet dreams in the winter, while it’s dark, and you get up and dress in the cold and heat a little coffee over a lamp and beat it for the factory,—­and stand on your feet all morning, in a noise that would deafen you, feeding a thing you ain’t got no interest in?  It don’t never need no rest!  By eleven o’clock you think you’re all in, that the morning’ll never end, but at noon you get a twenty five cent feed that lasts you until about five in the afternoon,—­and then you don’t know which way the machine’s headed.  I’ve often thought of one of them cutters at Shale’s as a sort of monster, watching you all day, waiting to get you when you’re too tired to care. (Dreamily.) When it looks all blurred, and you want to put your hand in it.

George.  Good God, Minnie!

Minnie.  And when the whistle blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage.  There’s no place to go except the streets—­but you’ve just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,—­even though you’re so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed and cry.

   (A pause.)

Maybe it’s because you’re tired.  When you’re tired that way is when you want a good time most.  It’s funny, but it’s so.

   (A pause.)

You ain’t got no friends except a few girls with hall bedrooms like yourself, and if a chance comes along for a little excitement, you don’t turn it down, I guess.

George (after a pause).  I never knew what your life was like.

Minnie.  Why would you?—­with friends, and everything you want, only to buy it?  But since the war come on, I tell you, I ain’t kicking, I can go to a movie or the theatre once in a while, and buy nice clothes, and I don’t get so tired as I used to.  I don’t want nothing from anybody, I can take care of myself.  It’s money that makes you free.

George.  Money!

Minnie.  When I looked into this room this morning and saw you standing here in your uniform, I says to myself, “He’s changed.”  Not that you wasn’t kind and good natured and generous, George, but you didn’t know.  How could you?  You’d never had a chance to learn anything!

George (bitterly, yet smiling in spite of himself).  That’s so!

Minnie.  I remember that first night I ran into you,—­I was coming home from your shops, and you made love to me right off the bat!  And after that we used to meet by the watering trough on the Lindon road.  We were kids then.  And it didn’t make no difference how tired I was, I’d get over it as soon as I saw you.  You were the live wire!