Oh, no, Abbie. Malice wasn’t in her. It was just that a good many things--well, the things that are important to most people weren’t so important to Bernice. It was another set of things were important. People called her detached. But--I don’t know. Maybe _they’re_ detached, Abbie. Maybe it’s Laura Kirby, the sensible woman, who’s detached,--Bernice would have laughed at that--the practical person who’s detached, and Bernice.... You know what I mean, Abbie? ABBIE I think I do--knowing her. FATHER To you--did she seem detached? ABBIE [_Tenderly thinking it out._] She was loving, and thoughtful, and gay. But always a little of what she is now--[_Faces the closed door_] off by herself. [_With that intensity the present moment does not account for._] You can’t expect to understand a person who is “off by herself.” Now can you? FATHER I understood Bernice. Except, there were things--outside what I understood. ABBIE [_Eagerly._] That’s it. And we should take what _we_ had, shouldn’t we, and not try to reach into--to where we didn’t go. FATHER I suppose that’s true, Abbie. [_Buries his face._] I wish my little girl hadn’t died. What am I going to do, Abbie? How can I stay here? And how can I go away? We should die in our proper order; I should have gone before my daughter. Anything else makes confusion. There’s not going to be anybody to laugh at me now, Abbie. I’ll miss the way Bernice laughed at me, a laugh that took me in and--yes, took me in. She laughed at my spending the whole time of the war studying Sanscrit. Well, why shouldn’t I? What can the old do about war? I had my vision of life. If that had been followed there’d have been no war. But in a world that won’t have visions--why not study Sanscrit while such a world is being made over--into another such world. [_Listening._] You hear some one, Abbie? ABBIE [_After listening._] It didn’t turn in. FATHER And you, Abbie. [_With wonder._] Why you were with us when Bernice was born. ABBIE Yes, I was--in the room the night she was born. The night she died I thought of the night she was born. FATHER That was--how long ago, Abbie? ABBIE Thirty-five years ago. FATHER Was Bernice thirty-five years old? She _was_, Abbie--my little girl? Well, life moves by--and we hardly know it’s moving. Why, Abbie, your whole life has been lived around Bernice. [_ABBIE nods._] It will be now as if things had--fallen apart. And it was the main thing in your life--doing things for her. ABBIE [_With excitement._] Yes, it was the _main_ thing in my life--doing what she wanted. I couldn’t do anything else now, could I? FATHER [_A little surprised at her agitation, but not thinking about it._] Why, no. Now some one is coming, Abbie. You hear them coming? ABBIE I think so. [_She goes to the door._] Yes. [_ABBIE opens the door and LAURA and CRAIG come in. CRAIG holds back as if to enter this house is something he can scarcely make himself do; he does not look around the room._