IRA: (_turning away_) I don't want to talk to you. What good comes of talking? (_In moving, he has stepped near the sack of corn. Takes hold of it_.) But not with Emil Johnson! That's not--what your mother died for. MADELINE: Father, you must talk to me. What did my mother die for? No one has ever told me about her--except that she was beautiful--not like other people here. I got a feeling of--something from far away. Something from long ago. Rare. Why can't Uncle Felix talk about her? Why can't you? Wouldn't she want me to know her? Tell me about her. It's my birthday and I need my mother. IRA: (_as if afraid he is going to do it_) How can you touch--what you've not touched in nineteen years? Just once--in nineteen years--and that did no good. MADELINE: Try. Even though it hurts. Didn't you use to talk to her? Well, I'm her daughter. Talk to me. What has she to do with Emil Johnson? IRA: (_the pent-up thing loosed_) What has she to do with him? She died so he could live. He lives because she's dead, (_in anguish_) And what is _he_ alongside her? Yes. Something from far away. Something from long ago. Rare. How'd you know that? Finding in me--what I didn't know was there. Then _she_ came--that ignorant Swede--Emil Johnson's mother--running through the cornfield like a crazy woman--'Miss Morton! Miss Morton! Come help me! My children are choking!' Diphtheria they had--the whole of 'em--but out of this house she ran--my Madeline, leaving you--her own baby--running as fast as she could through the cornfield after that immigrant woman. She stumbled in the rough field--fell to her knees. That was the last I saw of her. She choked to death in that Swede's house. They lived. MADELINE: (_going to him_) Oh--father, (_voice rich_) But how lovely of her. IRA: Lovely? Lovely to leave you without a mother--leave me without her after I'd had her? Wasn't she worth more than them. MADELINE: (_proudly_) Yes. She was worth so much that she never stopped to think how much she was worth. IRA: Ah, if you'd known her you couldn't take it like that. And now you cry about the world! That's what the world is--all coming to nothing. My father used to sit there at the table and talk about the world--my father and her father. They thought 'twas all for something--that what you were went on into something more than you. That's the talk I always heard in this house. But it's just talk. The rare thing that came here was killed by the common thing that came here. Just happens--and happens cruel. Look at your brother! Gone--(_snaps his fingers_) like that. I told him not to go to war. He didn't have to go--they'd been glad enough to have him stay here on the farm. But no,--he must--make the world safe for democracy! Well, you see how safe he made it, don't you? Now I'm alone on the farm and he--buried on some Frenchman's farm. That is, I hope they buried him--I hope they didn't just--(_tormented_) MADELINE: Oh, father--of course not. I know they did.