The line!
Stunted straggly line that meets the Outside face to face--and fights
for what itself can never be. Lonely line. Brave growing.
MRS PATRICK: It loses.
ALLIE MAYO: It wins.
MRS PATRICK: The farthest life is buried.
ALLIE MAYO: And life grows over buried life! (_lifted into that; then,
as one who states a simple truth with feeling_) It will. And Springs
will come when you will want to know that it is Spring.
(_The_ CAPTAIN _and_ BRADFORD _appear behind the drift of sand. They
have a stretcher. To get away from them_ MRS PATRICK _steps farther into
the room_; ALLIE MAYO _shrinks into her corner. The men come in, open
the closed door and go in the room where they left the dead man. A
moment later they are seen outside the big open door, bearing the man
away_. MRS PATRICK _watches them from sight_.)
MRS PATRICK: (_bitter, exultant_) Savers of life! (_to_ ALLIE MAYO) You
savers of life! 'Meeting the Outside!' Meeting--(_but she cannot say it
mockingly again; in saying it, something of what it means has broken
through, rises. Herself lost, feeling her way into the wonder of life_)
Meeting the Outside!
(_It grows in her as_ CURTAIN _lowers slowly_.)
THE VERGE
First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14, 1921.
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