(Big with the sense of the wonder of life.)

MRS PATRICK:  (lifting sand and letting it drift through her hand.) They’re what the sand will let them be.  They take strange shapes like shapes of blown sand.

ALLIE MAYO:  Meeting the Outside. (moving nearer; speaking more personally) I know why you came here.  To this house that had been given up; on this shore where only savers of life try to live.  I know what holds you on these dunes, and draws you over there.  But other things are true beside the things you want to see.

MRS PATRICK:  How do you know they are?  Where have you been for twenty years?

ALLIE MAYO:  Outside.  Twenty years.  That’s why I know how brave they are (indicating the edge of the woods.  Suddenly different) You’ll not find peace there again!  Go back and watch them fight!

MRS PATRICK:  (swiftly rising) You’re a cruel woman—­a hard, insolent woman!  I knew what I was doing!  What do you know about it?  About me?  I didn’t go to the Outside.  I was left there.  I’m only—­trying to get along.  Everything that can hurt me I want buried—­buried deep.  Spring is here.  This morning I knew it.  Spring—­coming through the storm—­to take me—­take me to hurt me.  That’s why I couldn’t bear—­(she looks at the closed door) things that made me know I feel.  You haven’t felt for so long you don’t know what it means!  But I tell you, Spring is here!  And now you’d take that from me—­(looking now toward the edge of the woods) the thing that made me know they would be buried in my heart—­those things I can’t live and know I feel.  You’re more cruel than the sea!  ’But other things are true beside the things you want to see!’ Outside.  Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring. (as if resentful of not more deeply believing what she says) What would there be for me but the Outside?  What was there for you?  What did you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted?

ALLIE MAYO:  I found—­what I find now I know.  The edge of life—­to hold life behind me—­

(A slight gesture toward MRS PATRICK.)

MRS PATRICK:  (stepping back) You call what you are life? (laughs)
Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand!

ALLIE MAYO:  (under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty)
Ugly!

MRS PATRICK:  (passionately) I have known life.  I have known life. 
You’re like this Cape.  A line of land way out to sea—­land not life.

ALLIE MAYO:  A harbor far at sea. (raises her arm, curves it in as if around something she loves) Land that encloses and gives shelter from storm.

MRS PATRICK:  (facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else out) Outside sea.  Outer shore.  Dunes—­land not life.

ALLIE MAYO:  Outside sea—­outer shore, dark with the wood that once was ships—­dunes, strange land not life—­woods, town and harbor.  The line!  Stunted straggly line that meets the Outside face to face—­and fights for what itself can never be.  Lonely line.  Brave growing.