HOLDEN: If it's playing safe it's that one you love more than yourself be safe. It would be a luxury to--destroy one's self. MADELINE: That sounds like Uncle Felix. (_seeing she has hurt him, she goes over and sits across from him at the table_) I'm sorry. I say the wrong things today. HOLDEN: I don't know that you do. MADELINE: But isn't uncle funny? His left mind doesn't know what his right mind is doing. He has to think of himself as a person of sentiment--idealism, and--quite a job, at times. Clever--how he gets away with it. The war must have been a godsend to people who were in danger of getting on to themselves. But I should think you could fool all of yourself all the time. HOLDEN: You don't. (_he is rubbing his hand on the table_) MADELINE: Grandfather Morton made this table. I suppose he and Grandfather Fejevary used to sit here and talk--they were great old pals. (_slowly_ HOLDEN _turns and looks out at the hill_) Yes. How beautiful the hill must have been--before there was a college there. (_he looks away from the hill_) Did you know Grandfather Morton? HOLDEN: Yes, I knew him. (_speaking of it against his will_) I had a wonderful talk with him once; about Greece--and the cornfields, and life. MADELINE: I'd like to have been a pioneer! Some ways they had it fierce, but think of the fun they had! A whole big land to open up! A big new life to begin! (_her hands closing in from wideness to a smaller thing_) Why did so much get shut out? Just a little way back--anything might have been. What happened? 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.