CLAIRE:  What are you doing here?

HARRY:  Getting breakfast. (all the while doing so)

CLAIRE:  I’ll not have you in my place!

HARRY:  If you take all the heat then you have to take me.

CLAIRE:  I’ll show you how I have to take you. (with her hands begins scooping upon him the soil ANTHONY has prepared)

HARRY:  (jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms, putting his arms around her) Claire—­be decent.  What harm do I do here?

CLAIRE:  You pull down the temperature.

HARRY:  Not after I’m in.

CLAIRE:  And you told Tom and Dick to come and make it uneven.

HARRY:  Tom and Dick are our guests.  We can’t eat where it’s warm and leave them to eat where it’s cold.

CLAIRE:  I don’t see why not.

HARRY:  You only see what you want to see.

CLAIRE:  That’s not true.  I wish it were.  No; no, I don’t either. (she is disturbed—­that troubled thing which rises from within, from deep, and takes CLAIRE. She turns to the Edge Vine, examines.  Regretfully to ANTHONY, who has come in with a plant) It’s turning back, isn’t it?

ANTHONY:  Can you be sure yet, Miss Claire?

CLAIRE:  Oh yes—­it’s had its chance.  It doesn’t want to be—­what hasn’t been.

HARRY:  (who has turned at this note in her voice.  Speaks kindly) Don’t take it so seriously, Claire. (CLAIRE laughs)

CLAIRE:  No, I suppose not.  But it does matter—­and why should I pretend it doesn’t, just because I’ve failed with it?

HARRY:  Well, I don’t want to see it get you—­it’s not important enough for that.

CLAIRE:  (in her brooding way) Anything is important enough for that—­if it’s important at all. (to the vine) I thought you were out, but you’re—­going back home.

ANTHONY:  But you’re doing it this time, Miss Claire.  When Breath of Life opens—­and we see its heart—­

(CLAIRE looks toward the inner room.  Because of intervening plants they do not see what is seen from the front—­a plant like caught motion, and of a greater transparency than plants have had.  Its leaves, like waves that curl, close around a heart that is not seen.  This plant stands by itself in what, because of the arrangement of things about it, is a hidden place.  But nothing is between it and the light.)

CLAIRE:  Yes, if the heart has (a little laugh) held its own, then Breath of Life is alive in its otherness.  But Edge Vine is running back to what it broke out of.

HARRY:  Come, have some coffee, Claire.

(ANTHONY returns to the inner room, the outer door opens.  DICK is hurled in.)

CLAIRE:  (going to the door, as he gasps for breath before closing it) How dare you make my temperature uneven! (she shuts the door and leans against it)