Act 3, Scene 2 Summary

This scene is set in the same place as the first scene of the play; by the side of a road on the farm.

Robert staggers on and sits weakly on the side of a ditch where he can see the sun rise. After a moment Ruth and Andrew hurry on and join him, concerned. Andrew tries to take him back to bed, but Robert refuses to go, saying simply that he's dying. Ruth sits beside him and puts his head in her lap.

Robert talks almost deliriously about being unable to stand being in the room any longer, and how it seems, "as if all [his] life [he'd] been cooped up in a room." He says he wants to die in the way he might have done if he'd had more courage, "alone … in a ditch by the open road...