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?