TOM:  Claire, (she lifts her head) As you stood there, looking into the womb you breathed to life, you were beautiful to me beyond any other beauty.  You were life and its reach and its anguish.  I can’t go away from you.  I will never go away from you.  It shall all be—­as you wish.  I can go with you where I could not go alone.  If this is delusion, I want that delusion.  It’s more than any reality I could attain, (as she does not move) Speak to me, Claire.  You—­are glad?

CLAIRE:  (from far) Speak to you? (pause) Do I know who you are?

TOM:  I think you do.

CLAIRE:  Oh, yes.  I love you.  That’s who you are. (waits again) But why are you something—­very far away?

TOM:  Come nearer.

CLAIRE:  Nearer? (feeling it with her voice) Nearer.  But I think I am going—­the other way.

TOM:  No, Claire—­come to me.  Did you understand, dear?  I am not going away.

CLAIRE:  You’re not going away?

TOM:  Not without you, Claire.  And you and I will be together.  Is that—­what you wanted?

CLAIRE:  Wanted? (as if wanting is something that harks far back.  But the word calls to her passion) Wanted! (a sob, hands out, she goes to him.  But before his arms can take her, she steps back) Are you trying to pull me down into what I wanted?  Are you here to make me stop?

TOM:  How can you ask that?  I love you because it is not in you to stop.

CLAIRE:  And loving me for that—­would stop me?  Oh, help me see it!  It is so important that I see it.

TOM:  It is important.  It is our lives.

CLAIRE:  And more than that.  I cannot see it because it is so much more than that.

TOM:  Don’t try to see all that it is.  From peace you’ll see a little more.

CLAIRE:  Peace? (troubled as we are when looking at what we cannot see clearly) What is peace?  Peace is what the struggle knows in moments very far apart.  Peace—­that is not a place to rest.  Are you resting?  What are you?  You who’d take me from what I am to something else?

TOM:  I thought you knew, Claire.

CLAIRE:  I know—­what you pass for.  But are you beauty?  Beauty is that only living pattern—­the trying to take pattern.  Are you trying?

TOM:  Within myself, Claire.  I never thought you doubted that.

CLAIRE:  Beauty is it. (she turns to Breath of Life, as if to learn it there, but turns away with a sob) If I cannot go to you now—­I will always be alone.

(TOM takes her in his arms.  She is shaken, then comes to rest.)

TOM:  Yes—­rest.  And then—­come into joy.  You have so much life for joy.

CLAIRE:  (raising her head, called by promised gladness) We’ll run around together. (lovingly he nods) Up hills.  All night on hills.

TOM:  (tenderly) All night on hills.