ADELINE: (_kind, but not going to let the truth get away_) You don't
think that--having to stay within--or deciding to, rather, makes you
think these things of the--blight of being without?

HOLDEN: I think there is danger to you in--so young, becoming alien to
society.

MADELINE: As great as the danger of staying within--and becoming like
the thing I'm within?

HOLDEN: You wouldn't become like it.

MADELINE: Why wouldn't I? That's what it does to the rest of you. I
don't see it--this fullness of life business. I don't see that Uncle
Felix has got it--or even Aunt Isabel, and you--I think that in buying
it you're losing it.

HOLDEN: I don't think you know what a cruel thing you are saying.

MADELINE: There must be something pretty rotten about Morton College if
you have to sell your soul to stay in it!

HOLDEN: You don't 'sell your soul'. You persuade yourself to wait.

MADELINE: (_unable to look at him, as if feeling shame_) You have had a
talk with Uncle Felix since that day in the library you stepped aside
for me to pass.

HOLDEN: Yes; and with my wife's physician. If you sell your soul--it's
to love you sell it.

MADELINE: (_low_) That's strange. It's love that--brings life along, and
then it's love--holds life back.

HOLDEN: (_and all the time with this effort against hopelessness_)
Leaving me out of it, I'd like to see you give yourself a little more
chance for detachment. You need a better intellectual equipment if
you're going to fight the world you find yourself in. I think you will
count for more if you wait, and when you strike, strike more maturely.

MADELINE: Detachment. (_pause_) This is one thing they do at this place.
(_she moves to the open door_) Chain them up to the bars--just like
this. (_in the doorway where her two grandfathers once pledged faith
with the dreams of a million years, she raises clasped hands as high as
they will go_) Eight hours a day--day after day. Just hold your arms up
like this one hour then sit down and think about--(_as if tortured by
all who have been so tortured, her body begins to give with sobs, arms
drop, the last word is a sob_) detachment.

HOLDEN _is standing helplessly by when her father comes in_.

IRA: (_wildly_) Don't cry. No! Not in this house! I can't--Your aunt and
uncle will fix it up. The law won't take you this time--and you won't do
it again.

MADELINE: Oh, what does _that_ matter--what they do to _me_?

IRA: What are you crying about the