CLAIRE: (_calling after him_) That end's always locked.
DICK: Claire darling, I wish you wouldn't say those startling things.
You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a shock--and really, it's unwise.
CLAIRE: Haven't you learned that the best place to hide is in the truth?
(_as_ HARRY _returns_) Why won't you believe me, Harry, when I tell you the truth--about doors being locked?
HARRY: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just because you don't eat salt.
CLAIRE: (_with one of her swift changes_) Oh, Harry! Try your egg without salt. Please--please try it without salt! (_an intensity which seems all out of proportion to the subject_)
HARRY: An egg demands salt.
CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'
HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.
CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.
HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (_going back to his breakfast_)
CLAIRE: And pleased--so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure, it is just the right kind of spirit--because it gets no lift. (_more brightly_) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.
DICK: I'll try it now. (_he goes to the breakfast table_)
CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?
HARRY: Claire.
DICK: (_pushing back his egg_) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.
HARRY: Claire, there is a _limit_.
CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a limit. So--the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get out, I suppose it is--quite unexpectedly, and perhaps--a bit terribly.
HARRY: Get out where?
CLAIRE: (_with a bright smile_) Where you, darling, will never go.
HARRY: And from which you, darling, had better beat it.
CLAIRE: I wish I could. (_to herself_) No--no I don't either
(_Again this troubled thing turns her to the plant. She puts by themselves the two which_ ANTHONY _covered with paper bags. Is about to remove these papers_. HARRY _strikes a match_.)
CLAIRE: (_turning sharply_) You can't smoke here. The plants are not used to it.
HARRY: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for them.
CLAIRE: There is design.
HARRY: (_to_ DICK) Am I supposed to be answered? I never can be quite sure at what moment I am answered.
(_They both watch_ CLAIRE, _who has uncovered the plants and is looking intently into the flowers. From a drawer she takes some tools. Very carefully gives the rose pollen to an unfamiliar flower--rather wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on a small shelf near the door of the inner room_.)
DICK: What is this you're doing, Claire?
CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.
DICK: It's all rather mysterious, isn't it?
HARRY: And Claire doesn't make it any less so.
CLAIRE: Can I make life any less mysterious?
HARRY: If you know what you are doing, why can't you tell Dick?
DICK: Never mind. After all, why should I be told? (_he turns away_)
(_At that she wants to tell him. Helpless, as one who cannot get across a stream, starts uncertainly_.)
CLAIRE: I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (_faces the room beyond the wall of glass_)--the flower I have created that is outside what flowers have been. What has gone out should bring fragrance from what it has left. But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing thing. I call the fragrance I am trying to create Reminiscence. (_her hand on the pot of the wistful little flower she has just given pollen_) Reminiscent of the rose, the violet, arbutus--but a new thing--itself.
Breath of Life may be lonely out in what hasn't been. Perhaps some day I can give it reminiscence.
DICK: I see, Claire.
CLAIRE: I wonder if you do.
HARRY: Now, Claire, you're going to be gay to-day, aren't you? These are Tom's last couple of days with us.
CLAIRE: That doesn't make me especially gay.
HARRY: Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don't you?
CLAIRE: I would like him to. Oh--I would like him to!
HARRY: Then be amusing. That's really you, isn't it, Dick?
DICK: Not quite all of her--I should say.
CLAIRE: (_gaily_) Careful, Dick. Aren't you indiscreet? Harry will be suspecting that I am your latest strumpet.
HARRY: Claire! What language you use! A person knowing you only by certain moments could never be made to believe you are a refined woman.
CLAIRE: True, isn't it, Dick?
HARRY: It would be a good deal of a lark to let them listen in at times--then tell them that here is the flower of New England!
CLAIRE: Well, if this is the flower of New England, then the half has never been told.