"We will! Name it!" They spoke at the same time.
She turned toward them with an earnestness which she had scarcely meant to betray.
"Go out, both of you, and leave me here alone a while."
Lawrence was silent. Her words and her tone sent a sharp pain through him, and he wondered if she were ill. He wanted to say something to her, started to do so, checked himself, and laughed embarrassedly.
Philip stared at her. He noticed the pale face and the dark rings under her eyes.
"Why, certainly," he said, and rose. "You aren't looking well, Claire. Is anything seriously wrong?" He looked at her again with the same unconsciously tender warmth in his eyes.
She saw it, flushed angrily, wanted to scream at him, and said simply, "No, I just want to think, and want it quiet. You two talk too much about yourselves and about things that you don't understand."
"Very true"—Lawrence also had risen—"if I did understand them, I'd show humanity how to stop being animals and be men."
"While as it is," she said nervously, "you allow them to blunder along and help the good work out by making plenty of trouble for them by your own blind shortness of vision."
He stood, wondering at her. How had he unintentionally hurt her, and what exactly did she mean?