TOM:  Oh, Claire, I’m trying so hard to—­save it for us.  Isn’t it our beauty and our safeguard that underneath our separate lives, no matter where we may be, with what other, there is this open way between us?  That’s so much more than anything we could bring to being.

CLAIRE:  Perhaps.  But—­it’s different with me.  I’m not—­all spirit.

TOM:  (his hand on her) Dear!

CLAIRE:  No, don’t touch me—­since (moving) you’re going away to-morrow? (he nods) For—­always? (his head just moves assent) India is just another country.  But there are undiscovered countries.

TOM:  Yes, but we are so feeble we have to reach our country through the actual country lying nearest.  Don’t you do that yourself, Claire?  Reach your country through the plants’ country?

CLAIRE:  My country?  You mean—­outside?

TOM:  No, I don’t think it that way.

CLAIRE:  Oh, yes, you do.

TOM:  Your country is the inside, Claire.  The innermost.  You are disturbed because you lie too close upon the heart of life.

CLAIRE:  (restlessly) I don’t know; you can think it one way—­or another.  No way says it, and that’s good—­at least it’s not shut up in saying. (she is looking at her enclosing hand, as if something is shut up there)

TOM:  But also, you know, things may be freed by expression.  Come from the unrealized into the fabric of life.

CLAIRE:  Yes, but why does the fabric of life have to—­freeze into its pattern?  It should (doing it with her hands) flow, (then turning like an unsatisfied child to him) But I wanted to talk to you.

TOM:  You are talking to me.  Tell me about your flower that never was before—­your Breath of Life.

CLAIRE:  I’ll know to-morrow.  You’ll not go until I know?

TOM:  I’ll try to stay.

CLAIRE:  It seems to me, if it has—­then I have, integrity in—­(smiles, it is as if the smile lets her say it) otherness.  I don’t want to die on the edge!

TOM:  Not you!

CLAIRE:  Many do.  It’s what makes them too smug in allness—­those dead things on the edge, died, distorted—­trying to get through.  Oh—­don’t think I don’t see—­The Edge Vine! (a pause, then swiftly) Do you know what I mean?  Or do you think I’m just a fool, or crazy?

TOM:  I think I know what you mean, and you know I don’t think you are a fool, or crazy.

CLAIRE:  Stabbed to awareness—­no matter where it takes you, isn’t that more than a safe place to stay? (telling him very simply despite the pattern of pain in her voice) Anguish may be a thread—­making patterns that haven’t been.  A thread—­blue and burning.

TOM:  (to take her from what even he fears for her) But you were telling me about the flower you breathed to life.  What is your Breath of Life?