(A mind burned to one idea, with greedy haste he shuts himself in the room at left.  MADELINE has been standing there as if mist is parting and letting her see.  And as the vision grows power grows in her.  She is thus flooded with richer life when her AUNT and Professor HOLDEN come back.  Feeling something new, for a moment they do not speak.)

AUNT ISABEL:  Ready, dear?  It’s time for us to go now.

MADELINE:  (with the quiet of plentitude) I’m going in with Emil
Johnson.

AUNT ISABEL:  Why—­Madeline. (falteringly) We thought you’d go with us.

MADELINE:  No.  I have to be—­the most I can be.  I want the wind to have something to carry.

AUNT ISABEL:  (after a look at Professor HOLDEN, who is looking intensely at MADELINE) I don’t understand.

MADELINE:  The world is all a—­moving field. (her hands move, voice too is of a moving field) Nothing is to itself.  If America thinks so—­America is like father.  I don’t feel alone any more.  The wind has come through—­wind rich from lives now gone.  Grandfather Fejevary, gift from a field far off.  Silas Morton.  No, not alone any more.  And afraid?  I’m not even afraid of being absurd!

AUNT ISABEL:  But Madeline—­you’re leaving your father?

MADELINE:  (after thinking it out) I’m not leaving—­what’s greater in him than he knows.

AUNT ISABEL:  You’re leaving Morton College?

MADELINE:  That runt on a high hill?  Yes, I’m leaving grandfather’s college—­then maybe I can one day lie under the same sod with him, and not be ashamed.  Though I must tell you (a little laugh) under the sod is my idea of no place to be.  I want to be a long time—­where the wind blows.

AUNT ISABEL:  (who is trying not to cry) I’m afraid it won’t blow in prison, dear.

MADELINE:  I don’t know.  Might be the only place it would blow. (EMIL passes the window, hesitates at the door) I’ll be ready in just a moment, Emil.

(He waits outside.)

AUNT ISABEL:  Madeline, I didn’t tell you—­I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but your uncle said—­if you refused to do it his way, he could do absolutely nothing for you, not even—­bail.

MADELINE:  Of course not.  I wouldn’t expect him to.

AUNT ISABEL:  He feels so deeply about these things—­America—­loyalty, he said if you didn’t come with us it would be final, Madeline.  Even—­(breaks) between you and me.

MADELINE:  I’m sorry, auntie.  You know how I love you. (and her voice tells it) But father has been telling me about the corn.  It gives itself away all the time—­the best corn a gift to other corn.  What you are—­that doesn’t stay with you.  Then—­(not with assurance, but feeling her way) be the most you can be, so life will be more because you were. (freed by the truth she has found) Oh—­do