laire! That's (_choked_) almost too much.

CLAIRE: (_one of her swift glances--canny, almost practical_) Well, I'm
glad if it is. How can I make it more? (_but what she sees brings its
own change_) I know what it is you're afraid of. It's because I have so
much--yes, why shouldn't I say it?--passion. You feel that in me, don't
you? You think it would swamp everything. But that isn't all there is to
me.

TOM: Oh, I know it! My dearest--why, it's because I know it! You think I
_am_--a fool?

CLAIRE: It's a thing that's--sometimes more than I am. And yet I--I am
more than it is.

TOM: I know. I know about you.

CLAIRE: I don't know that you do. Perhaps if you really knew about
me--you wouldn't go away.

TOM: You're making me suffer, Claire.

CLAIRE: I know I am. I want to. Why shouldn't you suffer? (_now seeing
it more clearly than she has ever seen it_) You know what I think about
you? You're afraid of suffering, and so you stop this side--in what you
persuade yourself is suffering, (_waits, then sends it straight_) You
know--how it is--with me and Dick? (_as she sees him suffer_) Oh, no, I
don't want to hurt you! Let it be you! I'll teach you--you needn't scorn
it. It's rather wonderful.

TOM: Stop that, Claire! That isn't you.

CLAIRE: Why are you so afraid--of letting me be low--if that is low? You
see--(_cannily_) I believe in beauty. I have the faith that can be bad
as well as good. And you know why I have the faith? Because
sometimes--from my lowest moments--beauty has opened as the sea. From a
cave I saw immensity.

My love, you're going away--
Let me tell you how it is with me;
I want to touch you--somehow touch you once before I die--
Let me tell you how it is with me.
I do not want to work,
I want to be;
Do not want to make a rose or make a poem--
Want to lie upon the earth and know. (_closes her eyes_)
Stop doing that!--words going into patterns;
They do it sometimes when I let come what's there.
Thoughts take pattern--then the pattern is the thing.
But let me tell you how it is with me. (_it flows again_)
All that I do or say--it is to what it comes from,
A drop lifted from the sea.
I want to lie upon the earth and know.
But--scratch a little dirt and make a flower;
Scratch a bit of brain--something like a poem. (_covering her face_)
Stop _doing_ that. Help me stop doing that!

TOM: (_and from the place where she had carried him_)
Don't talk at all.