ou can't help me, Elizabeth.

HARRY: Why not let her try?

CLAIRE: Why do you ask me to do that? This is my own thing. Why do you
make me feel I should--(_goes to_ ELIZABETH) I will be good to you,
Elizabeth. We'll go around together. I haven't done it, but--you'll see.
We'll do gay things. I'll have a lot of beaus around for you. Anything
else. Not--this is--Not this.

ELIZABETH: As you like, mother, of course. I just would have been so
glad to--to share the thing that interests you. (_hurt borne with good
breeding and a smile_)

HARRY: Claire! (_which says, 'How can you?'_)

CLAIRE: (_who is looking at_ ELIZABETH) Yes, I will try.

TOM: I don't think so. As Claire says--anything else.

ELIZABETH: Why, of course--I don't at all want to intrude.

HARRY: It'll do Claire good to take someone in. To get down to brass
tacks and actually say what she's driving at.

CLAIRE: Oh--_Harry_. But yes--I will try. (_does try, but no words come.
Laughs_) When you come to say it it's not--One would rather not nail it
to a cross of words--(_laughs again_) with brass tacks.

HARRY: (_affectionately_) But I want to see you put things into words,
Claire, and realize just where you are.

CLAIRE: (_oddly_) You think that's a--good idea?

ELIZABETH: (_in her manner of holding the world capably in her hands_)
Now let's talk of something else. I hadn't the least idea of making
mother feel badly.

CLAIRE: (_desperately_) No, we'll go on. Though I don't know--where
we'll end. I can't answer for that. These plants--(_beginning
flounderingly_) Perhaps they are less beautiful--less sound--than the
plants from which they diverged. But they have found--otherness,
(_laughs a little shrilly_) If you know--what I mean.

TOM: Claire--stop this! (_To_ HARRY) This is wrong.

CLAIRE: (_excitedly_) No; I'm going on. They have been shocked out of
what they were--into something they were not; they've broken from the
forms in which they found themselves. They are alien. Outside. That's
it, outside; if you--know what I mean.

ELIZABETH: (_not shocked from what she is_) But of course, the object of
it all is to make them better plants. Otherwise, what would be the sense
of doing it?

CLAIRE: (_not reached by_ ELIZABETH) Out there--(_giving it with her
hands_) lies all that's not been touched--lies life that waits. Back
here--the old pattern, done again, again and again. So long done it
doesn't even know itself for a pattern--in immensity. But