HARRY:  Get out where?

CLAIRE:  (with a bright smile) Where you, darling, will never go.

HARRY:  And from which you, darling, had better beat it.

CLAIRE:  I wish I could. (to herself) No—­no I don’t either

(Again this troubled thing turns her to the plant.  She puts by themselves the two which ANTHONY covered with paper bags.  Is about to remove these papers.  HARRY strikes a match.)

CLAIRE:  (turning sharply) You can’t smoke here.  The plants are not used to it.

HARRY:  Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for them.

CLAIRE:  There is design.

HARRY:  (to DICK) Am I supposed to be answered?  I never can be quite sure at what moment I am answered.

(They both watch CLAIRE, who has uncovered the plants and is looking intently into the flowers.  From a drawer she takes some tools.  Very carefully gives the rose pollen to an unfamiliar flower—­rather wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on a small shelf near the door of the inner room.)

DICK:  What is this you’re doing, Claire?

CLAIRE:  Pollenizing.  Crossing for fragrance.

DICK:  It’s all rather mysterious, isn’t it?

HARRY:  And Claire doesn’t make it any less so.

CLAIRE:  Can I make life any less mysterious?

HARRY:  If you know what you are doing, why can’t you tell Dick?

DICK:  Never mind.  After all, why should I be told? (he turns away)

(At that she wants to tell him.  Helpless, as one who cannot get across a stream, starts uncertainly.)

CLAIRE:  I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (faces the room beyond the wall of glass)—­the flower I have created that is outside what flowers have been.  What has gone out should bring fragrance from what it has left.  But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing thing.  I call the fragrance I am trying to create Reminiscence. (her hand on the pot of the wistful little flower she has just given pollen) Reminiscent of the rose, the violet, arbutus—­but a new thing—­itself.  Breath of Life may be lonely out in what hasn’t been.  Perhaps some day I can give it reminiscence.

DICK:  I see, Claire.

CLAIRE:  I wonder if you do.

HARRY:  Now, Claire, you’re going to be gay to-day, aren’t you?  These are
Tom’s last couple of days with us.

CLAIRE:  That doesn’t make me especially gay.

HARRY:  Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don’t you?

CLAIRE:  I would like him to.  Oh—­I would like him to!

HARRY:  Then be amusing.  That’s really you, isn’t it, Dick?

DICK:  Not quite all of her—­I should say.

CLAIRE:  (gaily) Careful, Dick.  Aren’t you indiscreet?  Harry will be suspecting that I am your latest strumpet.