this--has
invaded. Crept a little way into--what wasn't. Strange lines in life
unused. And when you make a pattern new you know a pattern's made with
life. And then you know that anything may be--if only you know how to
reach it. (_this has taken form, not easily, but with great struggle
between feeling and words_)

HARRY: (_cordially_) Now I begin to get you, Claire. I never knew before
why you called it the Edge Vine.

CLAIRE: I should destroy the Edge Vine. It isn't--over the edge. It's
running, back to--'all the girls'. It's a little afraid of Miss Lane,
(_looking sombrely at it_) You are out, but you are not alive.

ELIZABETH: Why, it looks all right, mother.

CLAIRE: Didn't carry life with it from the life it left. Dick--you know
what I mean. At least you ought to. (_her ruthless way of not letting
anyone's feelings stand in the way of truth_) Then destroy it for me!
It's hard to do it--with the hands that made it.

DICK: But what's the point in destroying it, Claire?

CLAIRE: (_impatiently_) I've told you. It cannot create.

DICK: But you say you can go on producing it, and it's interesting in
form.

CLAIRE: And you think I'll stop with that? Be shut in--with different
life--that can't creep on? (_after trying to put destroying hands upon
it_) It's hard to--get past what we've done. Our own dead things--block
the way.

TOM: But you're doing it this next time, Claire, (_nodding to the inner
room_.) In there!

CLAIRE: (_turning to that room_) I'm not sure.

TOM: But you told me Breath of Life has already produced itself. Doesn't
that show it has brought life from the life it left?

CLAIRE: But timidly, rather--wistfully. A little homesick. If it is less
sure this time, then it is going back to--Miss Lane. But if the
pattern's clearer now, then it has made friends of life that waits. I'll
know to-morrow.

ELIZABETH: You know, something tells me this is _wrong_.

CLAIRE: The hymn-singing ancestors are tuning up.

ELIZABETH: I don't know what you mean by that, mother but--

CLAIRE: But we will now sing, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee: Nearer to--'

ELIZABETH: (_laughingly breaking in_) Well, I don't care. Of course you
can make fun at me, but something does tell me this is wrong. To do
what--what--

DICK: What God did?

ELIZABETH: Well--yes. Unless you do it to make them better--to _do_ it
just to do it--that doesn't seem right to me.

CLAIRE: (_roughly_) 'Right to you!' And that's all you know of