PURDIE. You have it.

JOANNA. Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves?

PURDIE. We have the power right enough.

JOANNA. But isn't that rather splendid?

PURDIE. For those who have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a
strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they
are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright
faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first
time that she has not married a better man.) I am afraid there is not
much fight in me, Mabel, but we shall see. If you catch me at it
again, have the goodness to whisper to me in passing, 'Lob's Wood.'
That may cure me for the time being.

MABEL (still certain that she loved him once but not so sure why.)
Perhaps I will . . . as long as I care to bother, Jack. It depends on
you how long that is to be.

JOANNA (to break an awkward pause). I feel that there is hope in that
as well as a warning. Perhaps the wood may prove to have been useful
after all. (This brighter view of the situation meets with no
immediate response. With her next suggestion she reaches harbour.)
You know, we are not people worth being sorrowful about--so let us
laugh.

(The ladies succeed in laughing though not prettily, but the man has
been too much shaken.)