PROCTOR: Make your peace with it! Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away – make your peace! Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow!
MARY WARREN: I cannot, I cannot, I cannot.
– Arthur Miller
The Crucible, Act 2. John Proctor grabs Mary Warren by the throat "as though he would strangle her" and demands that she tell the court about Abigail’s lies. Yelling at her in frustration after Elizabeth is taken to jail, he pleads with Mary to be on the right side of the battle between good and evil. Hell and Heaven are personified, when John compares the struggle between them to a wrestling match. He speaks of Mary and himself are metaphorically naked to the elements with their sins exposed, as they face the "icy wind" of God’s judgment and punishment. He wants Mary to explain to the court that it was she and not Elizabeth who put the needle in the poppet and placed it in the Proctors’ house. But the act ends with Mary sobbing and repeating the words over and over, "I cannot." This is an example of how terrified the girls, and especially Mary, are of Abigail.