IRE: I don't know--precisely. If I did--there'd be no use saying it.
(_at_ HARRY's _impatient exclamation she turns to_ TOM)

TOM: (_nodding_) The only thing left worth saying is the thing we can't
say.

HARRY: Help!

CLAIRE: Yes. But the war didn't help. Oh, it was a stunning chance! But
fast as we could--scuttled right back to the trim little thing we'd been
shocked out of.

HARRY: You bet we did--showing our good sense.

CLAIRE: Showing our incapacity--for madness.

HARRY: Oh, come now, Claire--snap out of it. You're not really trying to
say that capacity for madness is a good thing to have?

CLAIRE: (_in simple surprise_) Why yes, of course.

DICK: But I should say the war did leave enough madness to give you a
gleam of hope.

CLAIRE: Not the madness that--breaks through. And it was--a stunning
chance! Mankind massed to kill. We have failed. We are through. We will
destroy. Break this up--it can't go farther. In the air above--in the
sea below--it is to kill! All we had thought we were--we aren't. We were
shut in with what wasn't so. Is there one ounce of energy has not gone
to this killing? Is there one love not torn in two? Throw it in! Now?
Ready? Break up. Push. Harder. Break up. And then--and then--But we
didn't say--'And then--' The spirit didn't take the tip.

HARRY: Claire! Come now (_looking to the others for help_)--let's talk
of something else.

CLAIRE: Plants do it. The big leap--it's called. Explode their
species--because something in them knows they've gone as far as they can
go. Something in them knows they're shut in to just that. So--go
mad--that life may not be prisoned. Break themselves up into crazy
things--into lesser things, and from the pieces--may come one sliver of
life with vitality to find the future. How beautiful. How brave.

TOM: (_as if he would call her from too far--or would let her know he
has gone with her_) Claire!

CLAIRE: (_her eyes turning to him_) Why should we mind lying under the
earth? We who have no such initiative--no proud madness? Why think it
death to lie under life so flexible--so ruthless and ever-renewing?

ANTHONY: (_from the door of the inner room_) Miss Claire?

CLAIRE: (_after an instant_) Yes? (_she goes with him, as they disappear
his voice heard_,'show me now ... want those violets bedded')

HARRY: Oh, this has got to _stop_. I've got to--put a stop to it some
way. Why, Claire used to be the best sport a man ever played around
with. I can'