le 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