HOLDEN:  (speaking with difficulty) It got—­set too soon.

MADELINE:  (all of her mind open, trying to know) And why did it?  Prosperous, I suppose.  That seems to set things—­set them in fear.  Silas Morton wasn’t afraid of Felix Fejevary, the Hungarian revolutionist.  He laid this country at that refugee’s feet!  That’s what Uncle Felix says himself—­with the left half of his mind.  Now—­the Hindu revolutionists—! (pause) I took a walk late yesterday afternoon.  Night came, and for some reason I thought of how many nights have come—­nights the earth has known long before we knew the earth.  The moon came up and I thought of how moonlight made this country beautiful before any man knew that moonlight was beautiful.  It gave me a feeling of coming from something a long way back.  Moving toward—­what will be here when I’m not here.  Moving.  We seem here, now, in America, to have forgotten we’re moving.  Think it’s just us—­just now.  Of course, that would make us afraid, and—­ridiculous.

(Her father comes in.)

IRA:  Your Aunt Isabel—­did she go away—­and leave you?

MADELINE:  She’s coming back.

IRA:  For you?

MADELINE:  She—­wants me to go with her.  This is Professor Holden, father.

HOLDEN:  How do you do, Mr Morton?

IRA:  (nods, not noticing HOLDEN_’s offered hand_) How’do.  When is she coming back?

MADELINE:  Soon.

IRA:  And then you’re going with her?

MADELINE:  I—­don’t know.

IRA:  I say you go with her.  You want them all to come down on us? (to
HOLDEN) What are you here for?

MADELINE:  Aunt Isabel brought Professor Holden, father.

IRA:  Oh.  Then you—­you tell her what to do.  You make her do it. (he goes into the room at left)

MADELINE:  (sadly, after a silence) Father’s like something touched by an early frost.

HOLDEN:  Yes. (seeing his opening and forcing himself to take it) But do you know, Madeline, there are other ways of that happening—­’touched by an early frost’.  I’ve seen it happen to people I know—­people of fine and daring mind.  They do a thing that puts them apart—­it may be the big, brave thing—­but the apartness does something to them.  I’ve seen it many times—­so many times—­so many times, I fear for you.  You do this thing and you’ll find yourself with people who in many ways you don’t care for at all; find yourself apart from people who in most ways are your own people.  You’re many-sided, Madeline. (moves her tennis racket) I don’t know about it’s all going to one side.  I hate to see you, so young, close a door on so much life.  I’m being just as honest with you as I know how.  I myself am making compromises to stay within.  I don’t like it, but there are—­reasons for doing it.  I can’t see you leave that main body without telling you all it is you are leaving.  It’s not a clean-cut case—­the side of the world or the side of the angels.  I hate to see you lose the—­fullness of life.