(The woman outside still crying under her breath turns abruptly and starts toward the line where dunes and woods meet.)

ALLIE MAYO:  I know where you’re going! (MRS PATRICK turns but not as if she wants to) What you’ll try to do.  Over there. (pointing to the line of woods) Bury it.  The life in you.  Bury it—­watching the sand bury the woods.  But I’ll tell you something! They fight too.  The woods!  They fight for life the way that Captain fought for life in there!

(Pointing to the closed door.)

MRS PATRICK:  (with a strange exultation) And lose the way he lost in there!

ALLIE MAYO:  (sure, sombre) They don’t lose.

MRS PATRICK:  Don’t lose? (triumphant) I have walked on the tops of buried trees!

ALLIE MAYO:  (slow, sombre, yet large) And vines will grow over the sand that covers the trees, and hold it.  And other trees will grow over the buried trees.

MRS PATRICK:  I’ve watched the sand slip down on the vines that reach out farthest.

ALLIE MAYO:  Another vine will reach that spot. (under her breath, tenderly) Strange little things that reach out farthest!

MRS PATRICK:  And will be buried soonest!

ALLIE MAYO:  And hold the sand for things behind them.  They save a wood that guards a town.

MRS PATRICK:  I care nothing about a wood to guard a town.  This is the outside—­these dunes where only beach grass grows, this outer shore where men can’t live.  The Outside.  You who were born here and who die here have named it that.

ALLIE MAYO:  Yes, we named it that, and we had reason.  He died here (reaches her hand toward the closed door) and many a one before him.  But many another reached the harbor! (slowly raises her arm, bends it to make the form of the Cape.  Touches the outside of her bent arm) The Outside.  But an arm that bends to make a harbor—­where men are safe.

MRS PATRICK:  I’m outside the harbor—­on the dunes, land not life.

ALLIE MAYO:  Dunes meet woods and woods hold dunes from a town that’s shore to a harbor.

MRS PATRICK:  This is the Outside.  Sand (picking some of it up in her hand and letting it fall on the beach grass) Sand that covers—­hills of sand that move and cover.

ALLIE MAYO:  Woods.  Woods to hold the moving hills from Provincetown.  Provincetown—­where they turn when boats can’t live at sea.  Did you ever see the sails come round here when the sky is dark?  A line of them—­swift to the harbor—­where their children live.  Go back! (pointing) Back to your edge of the woods that’s the edge of the dunes.

MRS PATRICK:  The edge of life.  Where life trails off to dwarfed things not worth a name.

(Suddenly sits down in the doorway.)

ALLIE MAYO:  Not worth a name.  And—­meeting the Outside!