ALLIE MAYO: Meeting the Outside. (_moving nearer; speaking more personally_) I know why you came here. To this house that had been given up; on this shore where only savers of life try to live. I know what holds you on these dunes, and draws you over there. But other things are true beside the things you want to see. MRS PATRICK: How do you know they are? Where have you been for twenty years? ALLIE MAYO: Outside. Twenty years. That's why I know how brave _they_ are (_indicating the edge of the woods. Suddenly different_) You'll not find peace there again! Go back and watch them _fight_! MRS PATRICK: (_swiftly rising_) You're a cruel woman--a hard, insolent woman! I knew what I was doing! What do you know about it? About me? I didn't go to the Outside. I was left there. I'm only--trying to get along. Everything that can hurt me I want buried--buried deep. Spring is here. This morning I _knew_ it. Spring--coming through the storm--to take me--take me to hurt me. That's why I couldn't bear--(_she looks at the closed door_) things that made me know I feel. You haven't felt for so long you don't know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here! And now you'd take _that_ from me--(_looking now toward the edge of the woods_) the thing that made me know they would be buried in my heart--those things I can't _live_ and know I feel. You're more cruel than the sea! 'But other things are true beside the things you want to see!' Outside. Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring. (_as if resentful of not more deeply believing what she says_) What would there be for me but the Outside? What was there for you? What did you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted? ALLIE MAYO: I found--what I find now I know. The edge of life--to hold life behind me-- (_A slight gesture toward_ MRS PATRICK.) MRS PATRICK: (_stepping back_) You call what you are life? (_laughs_) Bleak as those ugly things that grow in the sand! ALLIE MAYO: (_under her breath, as one who speaks tenderly of beauty_) Ugly! MRS PATRICK: (_passionately_) I have _known_ life. I have known _life_. You're like this Cape. A line of land way out to sea--land not life. ALLIE MAYO: A harbor far at sea. (_raises her arm, curves it in as if around something she loves_) Land that encloses and gives shelter from storm. MRS PATRICK: (_facing the sea, as if affirming what will hold all else out_) Outside sea. Outer shore. Dunes--land not life. ALLIE MAYO: Outside sea--outer shore, dark with the wood that once was ships--dunes, strange land not life--woods, town and harbor. 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.