Now let's talk of something else. I hadn't the least idea of making
mother feel badly.

CLAIRE: (_desperately_) No, we'll go on. Though I don't know--where
we'll end. I can't answer for that. These plants--(_beginning
flounderingly_) Perhaps they are less beautiful--less sound--than the
plants from which they diverged. But they have found--otherness,
(_laughs a little shrilly_) If you know--what I mean.

TOM: Claire--stop this! (_To_ HARRY) This is wrong.

CLAIRE: (_excitedly_) No; I'm going on. They have been shocked out of
what they were--into something they were not; they've broken from the
forms in which they found themselves. They are alien. Outside. That's
it, outside; if you--know what I mean.

ELIZABETH: (_not shocked from what she is_) But of course, the object of
it all is to make them better plants. Otherwise, what would be the sense
of doing it?

CLAIRE: (_not reached by_ ELIZABETH) Out there--(_giving it with her
hands_) lies all that's not been touched--lies life that waits. Back
here--the old pattern, done again, again and again. So long done it
doesn't even know itself for a pattern--in immensity. But 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_)