ADELAIDE:  (sitting down in a manner of capably opening a conference) Next, Elizabeth, and you, Claire.  Just what is the matter with Elizabeth?

CLAIRE:  (whose voice is cool, even, as if herself is not really engaged by this) Nothing is the matter with her.  She is a tower that is a tower.

ADELAIDE:  Well, is that anything against her?

CLAIRE:  She’s just like one of her father’s portraits.  They never interested me.  Nor does she. (looks at the drawings which do interest her)

ADELAIDE:  A mother cannot cast off her own child simply because she does not interest her!

CLAIRE:  (an instant raising cool eyes to ADELAIDE) Why can’t she?

ADELAIDE:  Because it would be monstrous!

CLAIRE:  And why can’t she be monstrous—­if she has to be?

ADELAIDE:  You don’t have to be.  That’s where I’m out of patience with you Claire.  You are really a particularly intelligent, competent person, and it’s time for you to call a halt to this nonsense and be the woman you were meant to be!

CLAIRE:  (holding the book up to see another way) What inside dope have you on what I was meant to be?

ADELAIDE:  I know what you came from.

CLAIRE:  Well, isn’t it about time somebody got loose from that?  What I came from made you, so—­

ADELAIDE:  (stiffly) I see.

CLAIRE:  So—­you being such a tower of strength, why need I too be imprisoned in what I came from?

ADELAIDE:  It isn’t being imprisoned.  Right there is where you make your mistake, Claire.  Who’s in a tower—­in an unsuccessful tower?  Not I. I go about in the world—­free, busy, happy.  Among people, I have no time to think of myself.

CLAIRE:  No.

ADELAIDE:  No.  My family.  The things that interest them; from morning till night it’s—­

CLAIRE:  Yes, I know you have a large family, Adelaide; five and Elizabeth makes six.

ADELAIDE:  We’ll speak of Elizabeth later.  But if you would just get out of yourself and enter into other people’s lives—­

CLAIRE:  Then I would become just like you.  And we should all be just alike in order to assure one another that we’re all just right.  But since you and Harry and Elizabeth and ten million other people bolster each other up, why do you especially need me?

ADELAIDE:  (not unkindly) We don’t need you as much as you need us.

CLAIRE:  (a wry face) I never liked what I needed.

HARRY:  I am convinced I am the worst thing in the world for you, Claire.

CLAIRE:  (with a smile for his tactics, but shaking her head) I’m afraid you’re not.  I don’t know—­perhaps you are.

ADELAIDE:  Well, what is it you want, Claire?

CLAIRE:  (simply) You wouldn’t know if I told you.

ADELAIDE:  That’s rather arrogant.

HARRY:  Yes, take a chance, Claire.  I have been known to get an idea—­and
Adelaide quite frequently gets one.