HARRY:  Claire!

CLAIRE:  Humility’s a real thing—­not just a fine name for laziness.

HARRY:  Well, Lord A’mighty, you can’t call Adelaide lazy.

CLAIRE:  She stays in one place because she hasn’t the energy to go anywhere else.

ADELAIDE:  (as if the last word in absurdity has been said) I haven’t energy?

CLAIRE:  (mildly) You haven’t any energy at all, Adelaide.  That’s why you keep so busy.

ADELAIDE:  Well—­Claire’s nerves are in a worse state than I had realized.

CLAIRE:  So perhaps we’d better look at Blake’s drawings, (takes up the book)

ADELAIDE:  It would be all right for me to look at Blake’s drawings.  You’d better look at the Sistine Madonna, (affectionately, after she has watched CLAIRE_’s face a moment_) What is it, Claire?  Why do you shut yourself out from us?

CLAIRE:  I told you.  Because I do not want to be shut in with you.

ADELAIDE:  All of this is not very pleasant for Harry.

HARRY:  I want Claire to be gay.

CLAIRE:  Funny—­you should want that, (speaks unwillingly, a curious, wistful unwillingness) Did you ever say a preposterous thing, then go trailing after the thing you’ve said and find it wasn’t so preposterous?  Here is the circle we are in._describes a big circle_) Being gay.  It shoots little darts through the circle, and a minute later—­gaiety all gone, and you looking through that little hole the gaiety left.

ADELAIDE:  (going to her, as she is still looking through that little hole) Claire, dear, I wish I could make you feel how much I care for you. (simply, with real feeling) You can call me all the names you like—­dull, commonplace, lazy—­that is a new idea, I confess, but the rest of our family’s gone now, and the love that used to be there between us all—­the only place for it now is between you and me.  You were so much loved, Claire.  You oughtn’t to try and get away from a world in which you are so much loved, (to HARRY) Mother—­father—­all of us, always loved Claire best.  We always loved Claire’s queer gaiety.  Now you’ve got to hand it to us for that, as the children say.

CLAIRE:  (moved, but eyes shining with a queer bright loneliness) But never one of you—­once—­looked with me through the little pricks the gaiety made—­never one of you—­once, looked with me at the queer light that came in through the pricks.

ADELAIDE:  And can’t you see, dear, that it’s better for us we didn’t?  And that it would be better for you now if you would just resolutely look somewhere else?  You must see yourself that you haven’t the poise of people who are held—­well, within the circle, if you choose to put it that way.  There’s something about being in that main body, having one’s roots in the big common experiences, gives a calm which you have missed.  That’s why I want you to take Elizabeth, forget yourself, and—­