MRS PATRICK:  It loses.

ALLIE MAYO:  It wins.

MRS PATRICK:  The farthest life is buried.

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.