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. PERSONS OF THE PLAY ANTHONY HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband HATTIE, The maid CLAIRE DICK, Richard Demming TOM EDGEWORTHY ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter ADELAIDE, Claire's sister DR EMMONS ACT I _The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light from below which comes up through an open trap-door in the floor. This slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY, _a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._ ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine! (_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself, and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.