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.
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