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.