hen when it gets too God-for-saken for a life-savin'
station, a lady takes it for a summer residence--and then spends the
winter. She's a cheerful one.

TONY: A woman--she makes things pretty. This not like a place where a
woman live. On the floor there is nothing--on the wall there is nothing.
Things--(_trying to express it with his hands_) do not hang on other
things.

BRADFORD: (_imitating_ TONY_'s gesture_) No--things do not hang on other
things. In my opinion the woman's crazy--sittin' over there on the
sand--(_a gesture towards the dunes_) what's she _lookin'_ at? There
ain't nothin' to _see_. And I know the woman that works for her's
crazy--Allie Mayo. She's a Provincetown girl. She was all right once,
but--

(MRS PATRICK _comes in from the hall at the right. She is a 'city
woman', a sophisticated person who has been caught into something as
unlike the old life as the dunes are unlike a meadow. At the moment she
is excited and angry_.)

MRS PATRICK: You have no right here. This isn't the life-saving station
any more. Just because it used to be--I don't see why you should
think--This is my house! And--I want my house to myself!

CAPTAIN: (_putting his head through the door. One arm of the man he is
working with is raised, and the hand reaches through the doorway_) Well
I must say, lady, I would think that any house could be a life-saving
station when the sea had sent a man to it.

MRS PATRICK: (_who has turned away so she cannot see the hand_) I don't
want him here! I--(_defiant, yet choking_) I must have my house to
myself!

CAPTAIN: You'll get your house to yourself when I've made up my mind
there's no more life in this man. A good many lives have been saved in
this house, Mrs Patrick--I believe that's your name--and if there's any
chance of bringing one more back from the dead, the fact that you own
the house ain't goin' to make a damn bit of difference to me!

MRS PATRICK: (_in a thin wild way_) I must have my house to myself.

CAPTAIN: Hell with such a woman!

(_Moves the man he is working with and slams the door shut. As the_
CAPTAIN _says, 'And if there's any chance of bringing one more back from
the dead_', ALLIE MAYO _has appeared outside the wide door which gives
on to the dunes, a bleak woman, who at first seems little more than a
part of the sand before which she stands. But as she listens to this
conflict one suspects in her that peculiar intensity of twisted things
which grow in unfavori