CLAIRE:  We’ll go on the sea in a little boat.

TOM:  On the sea in a little boat.

CLAIRE:  But—­there are other boats on other seas, (drawing back from him, troubled) There are other boats on other seas.

TOM:  (drawing her back to him) My dearest—­not now, not now.

CLAIRE:  (her arms going round him) Oh, I would love those hours with you.  I want them.  I want you! (they kiss—­but deep in her is sobbing) Reminiscence, (her hand feeling his arm as we touch what we would remember) Reminiscence. (with one of her swift changes steps back from him) How dare you pass for what you’re not?  We are tired, and so we think it’s you.  Stop with you.  Don’t get through—­to what you’re in the way of.  Beauty is not something you say about beauty.

TOM:  I say little about beauty, Claire.

CLAIRE:  Your life says it.  By standing far off you pass for it.  Smother it with a life that passes for it.  But beauty—­(getting it from the flower) Beauty is the humility breathed from the shame of succeeding.

TOM:  But it may all be within one’s self, dear.

CLAIRE:  (drawn by this, but held, and desperate because she is held) When I have wanted you with all my wanting—­why must I distrust you now?  When I love you—­with all of me, why do I know that only you are worth my hate?

TOM:  It’s the fear of easy satisfactions.  I love you for it.

CLAIRE:  (over the flower) Breath of Life—­you here?  Are you lonely—­Breath of Life?

TOM:  Claire—­hear me!  Don’t go where we can’t go.  As there you made a shell for life within, make for yourself a life in which to live.  It must be so.

CLAIRE:  As you made for yourself a shell called beauty?

TOM:  What is there for you, if you’ll have no touch with what we have?

CLAIRE:  What is there?  There are the dreams we haven’t dreamed.  There is the long and flowing pattern, (she follows that, but suddenly and as if blindly goes to him) I am tired.  I am lonely.  I’m afraid, (he holds her, soothing.  But she steps back from him) And because we are tired—­lonely—­and afraid, we stop with you.  Don’t get through—­to what you’re in the way of.

TOM:  Then you don’t love me?

CLAIRE:  I’m fighting for my chance.  I don’t know—­which chance.

(Is drawn to the other chance, to Breath of Life.  Looks into it as if to look through to the uncaptured.  And through this life just caught comes the truth she chants.)

  I’ve wallowed at a coarse man’s feet,
  I’m sprayed with dreams we’ve not yet come to. 
  I’ve gone so low that words can’t get there,
  I’ve never pulled the mantle of my fears around me
  And called it loneliness—­And called it God. 
  Only with life that waits have I kept faith.

(with effort raising her eyes to the man)