SCENE--Four years later.
The same spot on the same dock as in Prologue on another moonlight night in June. The sound of the waves and of distant dance music.
Margaret and her three sons appear from the right. The eldest is now eighteen. All are dressed in the height of correct Prep-school elegance. They are all tall, athletic, strong and handsome-looking. They loom up around the slight figure of their mother like protecting giants, giving her a strange aspect of lonely, detached, small femininity. She wears her mask of the proud, indulgent Mother. She has grown appreciably older. Her hair is now a beautiful gray. There is about her manner and voice the sad but contented feeling of one who knows her life-purpose well accomplished but is at the same time a bit empty and comfortless with the finality of it. She is wrapped in a gray cloak.
ELDEST--Doesn't Bee look beautiful tonight, Mother?
NEXT--Don't you think Mabel's the best dancer in there, Mother?
YOUNGEST--Aw, Alice has them both beat, hasn't she, Mother?
MARGARET--(with a sad little laugh) Each of you is right. (then, with strange finality) Good-by, boys.
BOYS--(surprised) Good-by.
MARGARET--It was here on a night just like this your father first--proposed to me. Did you ever know that?
BOYS--(embarrassedly) No.
MARGARET--(yearningly) But the nights now are so much colder than they used to be. Think of it, I went in moonlight-bathing in June when I was a girl. It was so warm and beautiful in those days. I remember the Junes when I was carrying you boys--(A pause. They fidget uneasily. She asks pleadingly) Promise me faithfully never to forget your father!
BOYS--(uncomfortably) Yes, Mother.
MARGARET--(forcing a joking tone) But you mustn't waste June on an old woman like me! Go in and dance. (as they hesitate dutifully) Go on. I really want to be alone--with my Junes.
BOYS--(unable to conceal their eagerness) Yes, Mother. (They go away.)
MARGARET--(slowly removes her mask, laying it on the bench, and stares up at the moon with a wistful, resigned sweetness) So long ago! And yet I'm still the same Margaret. It's only our lives that grow old. We are where centuries only count as seconds and after a thousand lives our eyes begin to open--(she looks around her with a rapt smile)--and the moon rests in the sea! I want to feel the moon at peace in the sea! I want Dion to leave the sky for me! I want him to sleep in the tides of my heart! (She slowly takes from under her cloak, from her bosom, as if from her heart, the mask of Dion as it was at the last and holds it before her face.) My lover! My husband! My boy! You can never die till my heart dies! You will live forever! You are sleeping under my heart! I feel you stirring in your sleep, forever under my heart. (She kisses him on the lips with a timeless kiss.)
(Curtain)
