(_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. DICK: About New England? CLAIRE: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant--about me. HARRY: (_going on with his own entertainment_) Explain that this is what came of the men who made the laws that made New England, that here is the flower of those gentlemen of culture who-- DICK: Moulded the American mind! CLAIRE: Oh! (_it is pain_) HARRY: Now what's the matter? CLAIRE: I want to get away from them! HARRY: Rest easy, little one--you do. CLAIRE: I'm not so sure--that I do. But it can be done! We need not be held in forms moulded for us. There is outness--and otherness. HARRY: Now, Claire--I didn't mean to start anything serious. CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I tell you, I want to break it up! If it were all in pieces, we'd be (_a little laugh_) shocked to aliveness (_to_ DICK)--wouldn't we? There would be strange new comings together--mad new comings together, and we would know what it is to be born, and then we might know--that we are. Smash it. (_her hand is near an egg_) As you'd smash an egg. (_she pushes the egg over the edge of the table and leans over and looks, as over a precipice_) HARRY: (_with a sigh_) Well, all you've smashed is the egg, and all that amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So that's that.