cally, 'I don't see how you can
do it,' or 'I admire your grit, old man, and I'd like to see you do it,'
and then begin scheming around to direct my interests, aspirations, and
efforts into some other channel from where I want them, as though, out
of his own great wisdom, he knew much better than I what a blind man
could do. If you want to learn just how small the imagination of mankind
is and how obstructive to progress is their fool good-heartedness, go
among them as a capable mind with a physical handicap. You'll size them
up, yourself included, as the most blindly wall-butting set of
blundering organisms that ever felt their way through an endlessly
obstructed universe."

"Breakfast!" Claire broke in with an unwonted sharpness in her tone.
"And do let the biscuits stop the argument."

They laughed and sat down to a silent meal. When it was ended, and the
men took their cigarettes to the fireplace, she said: "I wish you would
both do me a favor to-day."

"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?

Philip laughed heartily. "A just judgment on him for his sorry view of
the world," he commented, opening the door.

"We'll tramp back into the hills," he said to Lawrence when they were
both outside, "and see what t