iresome person too incompetent to make a perfect
tower.

CLAIRE: Well, now he's disposed of, what next?

ADELAIDE: (_sitting down in a manner of capably opening a conference_)
Next, Elizabeth, and you, Claire. Just what is the matter with
Elizabeth?

CLAIRE: (_whose voice is cool, even, as if herself is not really engaged
by this_) Nothing is the matter with her. She is a tower that is a
tower.

ADELAIDE: Well, is that anything against her?

CLAIRE: She's just like one of her father's portraits. They never
interested me. Nor does she. (_looks at the drawings which do interest
her_)

ADELAIDE: A mother cannot cast off her own child simply because she does
not interest her!

CLAIRE: (_an instant raising cool eyes to_ ADELAIDE) Why can't she?

ADELAIDE: Because it would be monstrous!

CLAIRE: And why can't she be monstrous--if she has to be?

ADELAIDE: You don't have to be. That's where I'm out of patience with
you Claire. You are really a particularly intelligent, competent person,
and it's time for you to call a halt to this nonsense and be the woman
you were meant to be!

CLAIRE: (_holding the book up to see another way_) What inside dope have
you on what I was meant to be?

ADELAIDE: I know what you came from.

CLAIRE: Well, isn't it about time somebody got loose from that? What I
came from made you, so--

ADELAIDE: (_stiffly_) I see.

CLAIRE: So--you being such a tower of strength, why need I too be
imprisoned in what I came from?

ADELAIDE: It isn't being imprisoned. Right there is where you make your
mistake, Claire. Who's in a tower--in an unsuccessful tower? Not I. I go
about in the world--free, busy, happy. Among people, I have no time to
think of myself.

CLAIRE: No.

ADELAIDE: No. My family. The things that interest them; from morning
till night it's--

CLAIRE: Yes, I know you have a large family, Adelaide; five and
Elizabeth makes six.

ADELAIDE: We'll speak of Elizabeth later. But if you would just get out
of yourself and enter into other people's lives--

CLAIRE: Then I would become just like you. And we should all be just
alike in order to assure one another that we're all just right. But
since you and Harry and Elizabeth and ten million other people bolster
each other up, why do you especially need me?

ADELAIDE: (_not unkindly_) We don't need you as much as you need us.

CLAIRE: (_a wry face_) I never liked what I needed.

HARRY: I am convinced I am the worst thing in the