The following days and even weeks passed quickly, carried on the wave of light-hearted play which Philip had so wisely started that Christmas night. February came with clear sun that set the snow glittering like a field of crystal under the dark pines, and they laughed with exuberance of spirit as they swept over it on their skis. Even Lawrence became an adept as long as he had one of their guiding hands to hold. All speculation was gone for the time being. Lawrence and Claire gave themselves up to a frank comradeship, in which Philip formed a splendid third, so that they seemed a trio of happy, healthy animals whose lives flowed without a break in the mere pleasure of living.
But one morning early in the month, Philip said after breakfast, over his coffee and cigarette, "I'm going for the day to my farthest traps across the river. Claire, would you care to go? We'll get back late this evening."
"I would," she said promptly. "I'll be ready in a few minutes."
Lawrence did not say anything, but to his sudden surprise he felt his heart sink. An insistent inner voice was saying, "I wish she wouldn't go."
He heard her, back of the curtain, dressing for the trip, and his little petulant thought grew into gloom at the prospect of her being away. He felt irritated at Philip for suggesting that she go.
"You'll have to leave me a good spread, Claire," he said finally when she emerged into the room.
"I'll fix you up a great meal," she laughed. "You can eat all day, if you like." In her voice there was an unusual warmth, for at his words she felt suddenly as though she were thoughtless of him in going. For a minute she pondered giving up the trip, then concluded that to do sowould seem ridiculous, and set about preparing his lunch.
Philip rose and, putting on his heavy coat, said carelessly, "You can carve us a new wooden image, Lawrence."
The words were casual and without intention, but they angered. Lawrence felt as though both of them were trying to make amends to him for their going, as though, being blind, he must of course stay at home, but ought to have something to occupy his time. His resentment grew stronger as he continued to think of their supposed condescension.
When the lunches were ready Claire and Philip started. At the door she paused and said gaily: "Keep the house warm for our returning, Lawrence."
He was sullenly angry and made no reply. The frank way in which she spoke of herself and Philip somehow recalled to his mind other couples, married lovers starting out somewhere, and his heart tightened perceptibly. After they were gone he sat thinking for a long time, and his impulsive feeling clarified into certainty. Claire and Philip were in love. Perhaps they did not know it yet themselves, and had not spoken, perhaps they had; at any rate, they were in love. It had grown between them in his very presence, and he, doubly blind fool, had not known. If he could have seen, it would have been clear to him, of course.
He thought of Claire's husband, and grew virtuously angry at Claire. Howard Barkley would mourn his days out, never knowing that his beloved wife was living in Bolivia with a Spanish trapper! He saw Claire going about the cabin as Philip's wife and doing for love the things she now did out of a desire to be of use, and his rage grew. Was it not for love that she did them now? But she was just as thoughtful of him as she was of Philip. "Of course, idiot," he muttered, "she pities you; you poor, abandoned, blind man, you are to be cared for, don't you see?" He strove to shake himself into a different mood by self-ridicule. Was this the philosopher who made life a matter of calm acceptance of circumstances which he knew to be his master? He laughed at himself, but the laugh was bitter, and he knew that he was not willing to accept this particular turn of circumstances.
But what right had he to judge what she did? She was not his wife nor the woman who would be his wife. She could never be his wife. There was her husband. No, it was not her husband that counted, but Philip! Suddenly Lawrence realized the point that he had reached.
He loved Claire Barkley.
The admission of that at last in frank, utter avowal set him dreaming of the joys she might have been to him. He thought of a thousand little intimacies, cares, thoughtfulnesses, that she might have given him and received from him, and they were all made vital, real, by the now ardent memory of her in his arms, of the hands he had held in his own so often of late in the open.
In the afternoon he grew disgusted with himself. He had moped all day in his chair, moving only to replenish the fire or get a cigarette, and he now shook himself vigorously free from his thoughts. "You love her, yes, and she obviously does not love you," he told himself. "Why, then, make the best of it, if you can't do better, and at least don't be a beast in your treatment of your host when he comes back to his own hearth."
With that he dragged out a block of wood, took his knife, and went to work. As was his way, he was soon unconscious of everything but the piece of wood beneath his hand. He had never done wood-carving before, and he was learning the technique that made it very different from clay. He had gone at this piece without any special intent and was shaping it into a cherub merely out of whim, but he was giving to the task every atom of his skill, and his hands worked with every nerve strained to detect and keep line and proportion.
Swiftly under his knife the child's body grew in shape, and he caressed the rough form tenderly. He would polish it later, and then what pleasure it would represent! It would make a great decoration for the cabin—for her cabin. He winced—yes, for hers and Philip's cabin. "Fool!" he ejaculated. "Forget it!" He bent again to hiswork, but it did not go so smoothly. Out there she and Philip would be laughing merrily together, skimming over the snow in long, sweeping strides, hand in hand. Would they think of him? Probably not, or if they did it would be to say, "Poor Lawrence! It's a pity he's blind. He has real talent."
He gritted his teeth. Well, he had real talent, and they should know it. She should know it. He would show her such carving as she had never thought possible. After all, was her love to him, Lawrence the artist, the capable, blindness-conquering artist? "I am reconstructing my life," he thought, "so that I can still find it valuable without the woman I want." He again laughed bitterly and said to himself, "You poor, blind, groveling beast, you, what a poor excuse for life you have, and what a tawdry substitute you would offer Claire for the vast joy that is hers! Oh, it is contemptible!"
He bent over his work again, and the door opened.
Claire came across the room and leaned over him, her body radiating a cool, healthy perfume as she laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, what a splendid piece of work, Lawrence!"
Her voice was joyous, triumphant, and his heart beat desperately against his chest. "They've declared their love," he thought, and then he said simply, his voice vibrant with the emotion he did not otherwise show, "It's been beastly lonesome to-day, Claire."
She laughed gaily, while her eyes clouded. Then she noticed the untouched food on the table.
"Why, Lawrence, didn't you like the lunch I fixed for you?"
"It was bully, Claire," he answered quickly, "but I wasn't very hungry to-day—I don't know why."
The emotional coloring in his voice set her whole being atremble. She had come in, radiant with the day's pleasure, and he had met her with his need. He had been too blue even to eat. She was suddenly seized with pity for him, as she thought of his long day alone. But more than that, over and over in her heart she kept saying, with a joy she could not conceal from herself, "He loves me! He loves me!"
Philip came in and bent over them both to look at the wooden child.
"Caramba!it is a marvelous thing!" he exclaimed. The unconscious use of the Spanish word showed the genuineness of his admiration.
Claire laughed joyously. She was glad that Philip knew the power of this blind man who loved her, and a vague feeling came over her that she was now somehow safe from Philip. Instantly she wondered at her feeling the need of safety from him. Glancing back over Lawrence's head, she met Ortez's eyes and read in their look a tenderness that he did not know was there. Her heart leaped unsteadily, and her lashes dropped. She was saying to herself, "How wonderful he is!"
Then she turned and almost ran behind the curtain that walled her room. On the edge of her bed she sat, her face in her hands, hot tears burning her eyes, while over and over the blood rushed into her cheeks and out again.
"Claire! Claire! What sort of a woman are you?" she moaned.
Her heart beat irregularly under the surge of emotion that shook her. She was glad, glad that Lawrence loved her. She had looked into the eyes of Philip Ortez, and her own had dropped, while her mind had leaped into admiration of him, warm, yielding admiration. What was it that had swept her on the discovery of one man's love to a deep, vibrant gladness—that another man's eyes had been filled with tenderness for her? Was she so changed from the Claire of old? Was she utterly degraded? Did she want both men to love her? Did she love either of them? What of her husband? She sank down on the bed and wept silently.
They were talking out there in the cabin. She heard Lawrence say laughingly: "One gets accustomed to hearing your voices around, and to hearing Claire do things, so that a day alone seems endless."
"Hearing Claire do things"—that was it—and suppose he knew what she was, would he want to hear her then?
"Oh, I know," Philip was answering. "It gets to be a sort of necessity, doesn't it, when we have so many associations and memories all among ourselves? I shall find the place dreary next winter, I am afraid, when you are back among your friends, and Claire"—he paused slightly—"will be going about as ever, doing things for her husband somewhere up there in the States."
Would her husband ever imagine or discover what she was? If he did, he would leave her. She remembered a girl in the slums at home who had refused to be uplifted. "Aw, one fellow ain't enough. A plain ham is all right for some, but I want a club-sandwich." She shuddered now at the memory of the girl's words, and shrank together on her bed. Was she another of that sort, abnormal, degenerate, whose life must find its level at last in the sordid riot of promiscuity, disguising itself as love? If Claire had never touched the bed-rock of self-abasement before, she was doing it now, there in that cabin.
She heard Ortez starting to get supper, and she sat up quickly. With stern control she forced herself to seem composed and quiet, while within her passions raged like a tornado. Self-contempt, wonder, amazement, pity for her husband, for Lawrence, and hatred for Philip Ortez swept round and round in her brain like a maelstrom.
She stepped through her curtain and said gaily: "You're preempting my privilege, Philip."
He laughed. "I thought perhaps you were tired," he said.
"She ought to be," remarked Lawrence from his chair, and in her present state she imagined in his voice a tenderness, a worry for her, and a distrust of her.
She took up the kettle, and hung it on its hook in the fireplace. "I never in my life imagined myself cooking over an open fire in this way," she said as she turned toward the little storeroom adjoining.
"You like it?" Philip asked carelessly.
She felt sure that his eyes had read her heart and that he was looking toward the future, his future with the wanton mistress he had found.
She could have screamed, "I hate you! I hate you!" but she said only, "It's great fun for a while; I wouldn't fancy it as a permanent thing."
"It surely must be different from the conveniences of your home."
"Rather," she laughed as she began cutting from the smoked meat that hung in the storeroom.
Now it was Lawrence who was speaking. "I guess she'd surprise us if we could supply her with a chafing-dish. I'd like to see her at work over one in my studio with the bunch around waiting hungrily for results."
Would these men never stop saying things that made her want to scream? What was the matter, that all at once the beauty of her day should be smashed into a discolored memory of self-hatred? Was there nothing in all the world but sordid thoughts of oneself and of men who, causing them, said things to make them worse?
After they had eaten she went to bed as soon as possible, leaving the men to smoke before the fire. She had pleaded weariness, and they had laughingly told her to get to sleep. They were out there now, talking in subdued tones so as not to disturb her—as if their voices did not ring through her suffering mind like clarions of evil! What should they say if she should suddenly spring before them and shout out her mad fancies? For a moment she had the wildest of impulses to laugh aloud, then suddenly she turned on her face as she recalled the emotion that had swept her when she saw Philip looking at her over Lawrence's head. Sleep finally stopped her tears.
The two men went to bed, and there was silence in the cabin. Lawrence was smiling, as he felt Philip's body there beside him in the darkness. "I could kill you now," he was thinking ironically, "and end all question of your loving Claire."
Philip, too, was awake. He had seen the hot flush that came into Claire's face that evening, and he knew that she had been troubled during the supper. He wondered if she were ill. Then suddenly he asked himself, "Is she in love with one of us?" He immediately tried to dismiss the thought as unworthy of her. She was notthe kind of woman to forget her marriage vows. But what a home she could make for the man she loved! If he had only known her in time!
But there was still friendship—yes, surely she could give that. Complete understanding and perfect sympathy would be the basis of a lasting attachment. "Who knows?" he pondered. "It may be that fate has sent her to me to teach me what a great self-denying love can be. In Claire I may find my dream-star again."
When Claire awoke the next morning her whole being seemed gathered into a tense strain that made her feel as though the least thing might snap the taut nerves in her body and leave her broken and stranded on some far, emotional shoal. Her heart beat unevenly, while her lips and hands felt dry and hot, as if she had spent hours in a desert wind. She did not experience the bitter anguish of the night before; such storms are too wild to last, but it had left her deadly heavy within, and she was unable to recover her usual calm.
One great determination dominated her, to prevent these men, at any cost, from knowing her real feelings. It was a determination born out of the sheer force that was carrying her on, a struggle that came from the very strength of the tide she sought to resist.
She had been awakened by a sudden and clear image, the result of her unsettled mind. Her husband was beside her, leaning over the bed and looking down at her with a great love and a greater pity shining in his eyes. She thought that she had thrown up her arms to close about him with the frantic joy of a rescued person, only to have them meet in empty air and fall listless at her sides again.
Beyond the curtain she heard Philip saying cheerfully: "It is a great day outside, one of Claire's days for play."
"Good!" Lawrence answered. "We'll go out, then, and play."
A rush of self-pity, anger against her situation, fear of she knew not what, and a gnawing desire to escape blended in her thoughts, while her heart warmed at the sound of Lawrence's words.
"Oh," she thought, "I can never, never stand this day!"
She got out of bed and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings, stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but this morning she flushed with sudden anger that a chair should have been left in his way. Then she realized that she was foolish, stepped through the curtain, and said before she thought:
"Lawrence, I do wish that you'd look where you are going!"
He laughed merrily. "So do I," he rejoined. "For some years failure to do so has kept me with at least one skinned shin. But just think of the cost of stockings had I been blind as a boy!"
Suddenly she had a vivid picture of him as a ragged, little fellow, stumbling about through his unfathomable darkness, bumping into things and leaving jagged holes in his child's black stockings. Whether she wanted to laugh or cry she did not know, but a great, warm surge of motherliness came over her for the child she imaged, and she said aloud, "Poor little urchin!"
Philip turned and looked at her, smiling. "It would have been a picture indeed," he said.
"I had enough troubles during my rebellious childhood at the orphanage without adding imaginary woes," Lawrence went on, amusedly retrospective. "I remember one day when I was at the awkward stage. I was all dressed for church and happened to stumble over another boy lying in the grass. I fell against a bench, my trousers caught on a projecting nail, and ripped dreadfully. The matron gave me a scolding and sent me to bed for the day."
"Brought up in an orphanage!" thought Claire. "No wonder he is pessimistic."
"I didn't mind missing church," Lawrence continued; "but it struck me as a piece of gross injustice that I should be punished for a boy's lack of muscular coordination. I've experienced the same fate over my blindness. It seems to be a special trick people have, and they play it incessantly. I should think it would get as tiresome to them by and by as it did to me some years ago."
Claire felt as if she were included in his casual criticism of mankind, and wondered just how she had been addicted to the practise. A dozen different instances came to her, and she felt very penitent.
"It's because we're all so thoughtless," she said.
"Perhaps. I rather choose to state it differently. It's for the same reason that I do thousands of things, because I'm more interested in myself than I am in any one else. I'm selfish, and so is the rest of humanity."
"But we aren't deliberately so," Philip protested. "Isn't it rather that we are short-sighted and unimaginative?"
"It may be. The end is the same. If I am too short-sighted, too unimaginative to know how a fellow being feels, I can do nothing but blunder along. He may be hurt by me. I may do him an injustice, I may even cheat him of his chance at life, but it can't be helped, and again the result amounts to my being selfish."
As she worked over her biscuit dough, Claire listened to their talk resentfully. She wished they would keep still, but she said nothing. They went ahead, demonstrating, she thought bitterly, the truth of Lawrence's argument.
"I suppose mankind generally does the best it can," Philip said thoughtfully. "If you ask a man, if you really talk with him, you will find him kindly, inclined to be generous, and willing to do what he can for another. I have always found that true."
"So have I, in a way. He is kindly, he is inclined to be generous, and he is willing to do what he can for another. The trouble is, he makes a maudlin sentiment of his kindliness, a self-flattering charity of his generous inclinations, and is unable to do what he can for another because he is quite sincerely persuaded that he can't do anything."
"My friend, I have had men help me when it cost them trouble to do it. We all have. Without it, we would none of us accomplish anything of value."
"I, too, have had them help me, from the lending of money down to guiding me across a traffic-blurred street, but I have never yet found more than three or four whose imagination was keen enough and whose judgment clear enough to give me a square deal at living."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the same man who will help me across the street, lend me money, and be a splendid comrade, stops short when he comes to the field of self-support. He will say sympathetically, '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 hertone 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 there is of deficient imagination in them."
"There isn't," Lawrence said quietly; "they and the ocean are testimonials to the real potential power of an otherwise very faulty artist."
Left alone, Claire worked furiously at setting the house to rights. Her nervous state led her to throw herself into the work with an energy that kept her from thinking. She sought for things to do with the desperation of a person whose only escape from the furies that followed him is utter physical exhaustion. When the cabin had been arranged and rearranged until there was no possible excuse for further effort, she took her heavy man's coat from its place and stepped out upon the snow-covered plateau before the house.
Along its edges the lake shone milk-white in the sun, while farther out the ice glinted a clear, watery blue that made a gleaming jewel set in the sparkling snow around it. She stood gazing across the ice to the forest beyond. Its still beauty crept over her, and she breathed deeply of the cold, crisp air. Her head ached dully, and her chest felt tight as though trying to expand beyond its limit to make room for the trouble that filled her being. After standing motionless for a few moments, she started briskly across the snow toward the far side of the lake. She walked carefully over the ice and into the trees beyond. In her mind was one thought, to escape—but escape from what? From herself, she answered, and then suddenly, with a panicky bursting of the tension, she thought that is done only through death.
She stopped and let the word "death" fill her mind, as a word sometimes does, growing and growing until its increasing weight oppresses the brain with a sense of physical pressure. "Death"—is it an escape? She tried to imagine herself dead, and failed. She could find no adequate image to express oblivion, and she gave up trying, while she began to wonder if she actually were immortal, and if she were, what would she say to herself beyond the edge of life?
She thought of herself as standing, naked of soul, unbodied, in some far etherealized atmosphere, and she shuddered. "I would still be Claire, loving these two men and fearing a third." Tears crept down her cheeks. No, she did not want to be immortal and have no escape from herself.
If she would only be able to endure the months still remaining before she got home, then everything would be settled. But would it? Did she want Lawrence to go out of her life, did she want to lose him? She could have him still as a friend, her home open to him always, her husband as glad to welcome him as she herself—yes, that would be best.
She was walking again now, rapidly, thinking as she moved, and it all seemed very clear to her. She would tell her husband how Lawrence had suffered, how brave he had been, and how he had carriedher on and on, when death seemed inevitable. Howard would owe Lawrence a tremendous debt of gratitude, and would make existence easier for him. Lawrence had had a hard life, his bitter attitude showed that he deserved a less obstructed road, and she would give it to him. In their home all three would talk, laugh, and be, oh, so happy, while Lawrence could work better with his studio near her, perhaps in her own house where care could be taken of him. He would create great art there, and his bitterness would end. She would show him that her husband was understanding and imaginative. Again she stopped suddenly.
But Lawrence—would he accept? He was so independent, so doggedly determined to fight his life out while his very battling made him ironical and darkly pessimistic. She tried to imagine him agreeing to her plan, and instead she heard him say, "I'm sorry, Claire, but I can't do it. I've got to go it alone and win or go under. I can't accept the charity you offer me in place of love. Gratitude, I know, prompts you, but you owe me nothing, you paid your debt by being eyes for me. No, if we can't be lovers, we can't be anything else. I know my limitations."
Why had she put in that about "lovers"? He had never said anything to lead her to think he would say that. She answered herself that it was because she would want him to say it. And if he did say it, what would she answer? She would say—no, she couldn't do that—she would want to say, "Then let us be lovers!" But that was impossible. In her own husband's home!
And what would she think of Philip when she was again in her old world? He, also, was deserving of gratitude. She stamped her foot in the snow. She hated him, hated him, and he would drop out of her life, utterly and forever. She would be glad when she saw the last of him with his seductive eyes. Those eyes—why did he, and not Lawrence, have them? They should have been Lawrence's. It was one more instance of the endless ironic humor of the universe.
Lawrence—Lawrence and her husband! She turned wearily back toward the cabin.
It was nearly noon when she reached home again, and Lawrence, a worried look on his face, was standing in the door of the cabin.
"You beat me back," Claire said, as she approached, and her heart leaped at the look of relief that came into his face.
"Claire, you ought to be punished," he said in gay, tender tones.
"What sentence would you pass, Mr. Judge?" she questioned.
He stepped out toward her.
"Perhaps your fate needs a good washing in cold snow," he laughed.
"Perhaps it does," she said, caressingly. "Do you think you could administer it?"
"I know I could."
He stooped and took up a handful of snow.
She did the same and said gaily, "Two washed faces seem inevitable."
Lawrence laughed and caught her around the waist. Her blood tingled, and her throat hurt as if she would choke. She began to struggle desperately, frightened at her own emotion. He laughed, and held her tighter with one arm while he tried to reach her face with the other hand. She was pressed against him, and they swayed back and forth, while Philip laughed from the doorway. Her heart was beating trip-hammer blows against her breast, she gasped for breath, and her eyes closed. His hand reached her face, and she ducked against his shoulder.
"Lawrence! Lawrence!" she sobbed. Her voice startled him. Its pleading, yielding intensity sent his own blood racing. He let her go, and stepped back quickly while his breath came short.
"Pardon me, Claire," he muttered, and turned away.
Claire saw Philip watching them, in his eyes a strange, new glitter. She rushed past him to the cabin and into her little room.
It was a silent dinner they ate that day.
Claire was deeply, bitterly humiliated, and she kept seeing again and again with exaggerated clearness that look in Philip's eyes when she had staggered free from Lawrence's arms. It burned in her mind like an unquenchable coal, and she revoltedat it. She was utterly unable to collect her thoughts. She fancied she could still feel the warm pressure of Lawrence's body while she suffered untold agony of soul for having been carried away by his touch. She reproached herself with a scorn that seared for having ever allowed herself to engage in that silly scuffle.
She could scarcely bear to sit at the table with Philip, and she did not once look in his direction. In her heart there was no anger against Lawrence, only a dull, aching dread, tempered with a longing she did not attempt to analyze.
Dominating her thought was the one phrase, "Why need Philip have seen?"
That look in his eyes—oh, God! would she have to go on day after day facing those eyes that compelled her in spite of herself? Must she feel his glances burning through her when her soul was filled with hatred for him? But was it hatred? Surely his eyes, those lights that made her marvel, were the windows to a high and noble soul. Yes, he was fine, yet she wished he was not there, that she had never known him. She asked herself if she would rather have perished, and she knew she would not. Better to have lived forever with Philip's eyes piercing into her than to give up life when Lawrence was with her, needing her, and—she stopped—loving her, yes, loving her. It was true. She remembered his voice when he had released her, and thrilled again at the tense note.
He did love her! And Philip? She felt her heart sink, and then a strange, subtle warmth came over her. It was good to be loved by two men so powerful, so worth while, each in his own way.
Of course, she could never care for Philip. He was beyond her power to love; besides her heart was filled with Lawrence. But her husband, yes, she had loved her husband. Her many days of happiness with him proved that. She could never have lived with him as she had if love had not been between them. She must remember that, and be true to him. It would be hard to see Lawrence go out of her life, but it was her duty, she owed it to herself, to her husband, and to society.
If she could only get through the remaining months without allowing Lawrence to hope! She must not give him another opportunity to want her or to discuss his feelings with her. She would be very, very careful.
She must plan it as easily for him as possible. The way to accomplish that was not to be with him. This would necessitate her associating more with Philip. After all, why shouldn't she? He was good and strong, and not really in love with her. Of course, he might be, if she allowed it, but she would stop that. She would show him by word, look, and act that any such love was inconceivable. He would understand and forget his earlier feeling, for after all he was not yet alive to the situation. It was merely circumstances that had brought that look into his eyes.
Disliking him as she did, it would be hard to associate with him. She studied this last problem carefully, and at last arrived at a new state of mind. She did not dislike him, it was merely the natural unconscious trend of male and female that she hated. He was not to blame, neither was she, and they were, fortunately, beings with mind and will. They could use their God-given power to talk it out and face the situation. Then Philip's natural nobility would make the solution easy. They would be on a splendid footing of frank understanding; their foresight would have saved them from a ridiculous and criminal mistake.
In these mountains she would have found two real friends and a higher ground of life. After the first painful talk with Philip they would go out from the cabin, warm comrades, with nothing to regret.
Silently, Lawrence rose and went to his work-chair. The zeal with which he began to cut his wood showed more clearly than any of them quite knew, the turbulent state of his mind. He was carried far into speculative possibilities that shook him with their power. He was absolutely in love with Claire, that was undoubted. He knew it, and he was determined to tell her so. To continue living in this uncertainty, with the memory of her pressed against him always compelling him to put out his arms and draw her again to himself, was intolerable. He would speak, and settle it once for all, nor would he take any compromising negative as a reply. That tone she had used could indicate but one thing, she loved him, and whether she knew it or not, whether she wanted to know it or not, should not matter. He would argue it out with her, showing her with the inexorable logic back of their whole experience how she was his, his in spite of her husband, in spite of blindness, in spite of everything. Without her, life was useless, barren, and dead. He must have her!
He carved viciously but accurately, while his mind and body yearned toward the hour when she would be in his arms, yielding, abandoned, loving.
Claire watched him from her place at the table in calmness of mind that, following her day of tumult, she could not understand. Peace, the peace that comes when one thinks he has settled something forever, was hers.
"Philip," she said, "our artist has buried himself in his work. Shall we go forth on a chance adventure?"
Lawrence choked back a whirl of jealous suspicion that swept to his lips, and said from his corner, "Do! I'll have a surprise for your return."
He wanted to say, "No, stay here, Claire. I wish to tell you something, to make you see that I love you, that this Philip is not for you, that he is outside our real lives," but his tongue refused to obey his will.
"It sounds inviting," said Philip, rising. "Suppose we do."
They were gone.
Lawrence worked savagely, his mind grasping at impossible thoughts which kept struggling for expression. He was afraid, afraid till it chilled him, lest, after all, she loved Philip. If her voice had sounded so intense that noon, it had been because she resented his holding her while her real lover looked on.
Meanwhile Claire and Philip tramped through the pines in silence. She was wondering why she had come. She hesitated before speaking to him as she had determined. Perhaps he would be hurt at her imagining he could think of making any advances to a married woman, he would feel that she had suspected and accused him of a thing of which he was incapable.
Speech was difficult, so she trudged along, feeling very uncomfortable. Her heart ached as she saw again the lonely look on Lawrence's face bending over his work back there in the cabin.
"The adventure is slow in coming," Philip said, genially.
"Perhaps we don't know how to find it," she answered, not heeding her words especially. "To find adventure, one must be awake to possibilities."
"True," he mused, looking at her. "So much depends on a man's experience, knowledge, and imagination."
"I suppose life itself may set us, even calmly walking here, in the heart of an adventure."
"I have no doubt it does," he said.
Claire looked at him in faint alarm.
"Why," she stammered, "I didn't imagine it was true when I spoke."
"To him who has faith, the wildest dreams are always possibilities."
"Do you believe that, Philip?"
"I have found it to be quite true. I often dreamed of good company here in my wilderness and a charming woman about my cabin. It has happened."
"But even that has its very strong drawbacks, hasn't it?"
"What, for example?" He looked at her, earnestly.
"Oh," she hesitated, laughed, and said, "the rapidly depleted food supply, your time for thought broken, and all the rest."
"One sometimes finds a relief from thought very agreeable."
She wanted to laugh at the force with which his words struck her. "I'm sure that depends on the thought, as Lawrence would say," she answered, smiling.
"It does. And there is nothing I would not give to escape from my present thoughts." His voice was pitched low.
Her heart failed her, but she said bravely, "Perhaps you need a confessor, Sir Philip."
"I do, a gracious one, who can listen well."
"Then a woman would never serve," Claire laughed. "She would want to talk, you know."
Philip stopped, and looked at her. As far as he could see, she was calm, indifferent, the lady making talk.
"Perhaps," he said, lightly. "They have that reputation, I know."
"Now, I"—she laughed—"I, also, need a confessor."
"You?" His look searched her, incredulously. "What in the name of all the saints have you to confess?"
"Oh! Many things. Misunderstandings, social follies, mistakes in character reading, mean thoughts, lots of things."
"Absurd!" His tone was amused. "Who of us is not a sinner in those things?"
"But suppose," she ventured, hesitant—"suppose I had misjudged you? Suppose I had suspected you of things you were not at all guilty of?"
"I should be sorry if you told me of them."
It was impossible, she thought, to go on. He would indeed be sorry, and how foolish she had been! But what had he meant a moment before?
"Is your confession worse?" she asked.
"I think so. A man is so apt to be a mad fool," he said, and lapsed into silence.
They walked some distance before either spoke. Then Claire laughed suddenly. "Philip," she said, "we all three need a change of scene."
He turned, and his face was crimson as he looked at her. "It will be here soon. We can go out in April."
He had answered her dully, with a heavy sadness in his voice. It was her golden opportunity; and she took it.
"Splendid!" she cried—"splendid! I so want to get back to my husband. I am scarcely able to wait at all."
"I suppose," he said, "it seems a long time that you have been separated."
"Oh, so long," she answered, softly. "And I do so want him."
He walked on, slowly. "I shall miss you very much."
Her manner and expression were those of a pleased, frank child when she answered. "Really, I was so afraid I had been stupid company, and I owe so much to you. My husband will want to come clear back here to thank you for your winter's hospitality."
"It would hardly be worth his while. The debt is more than paid."
"I shall be sorry—in a way," she went on. "We have become such good friends, such good comrades with not the least bit of unpleasantness to remember. I shall always be glad of that."
"Yes," he said. "I am glad, indeed, that you feel so."
"If any one had ever told me that I should find so rare a gentleman here"—she laughed—"I would have thought they were talking medieval gallantry."
"Thank you. A gentleman is always himself when a lady is a lady."
Claire flushed a little, and said nothing.
"I shall remember you with pleasure and regret," continued Philip, his head high.
Her eyes opened wide, like a child's. "Oh, with regret, too?"
"Yes. Regret that you did not come to my cabin sooner, freer, and to stay longer."
"You are a consummate flatterer, Philip," she chided.
"I suppose it seems artificial; one can scarcely imagine that I should be in earnest," he said, a little bitterly.
Her conscience hurt her, though she did not know why. She could have said those things before and thought nothing of them. Why did she feel sorry now?
"I didn't mean that," she said, earnestly. "Believe me, I did not."
"No," he replied, "you answered out of mere indifference."
"But I am not indifferent to you, Philip. I like you very much." She was afraid she had hurt his feelings, and she, herself, was so tense, so troubled, that she was uncertain of her emotional attitudes these days. She felt that somehow she had been cruel and very ungracious toward the man to whom she owed so much.
"I know," he said, "one is interested, of course, in a novel, foreign mountaineer."
She was beginning to feel achy, and tears were near the surface.
"Philip, why do you misunderstand me?" she cried. "It isn't that at all. I like you for the man you are."
He smiled sadly. "And did it ever occur to you that I might love you for the woman you are?" he said suddenly, his good resolutions all gone.
She stopped and her breath quickened. Over her rushed a tide of fear, regret, sorrow. Even then she wondered that it was pity and not anger which moved her.
"I do not believe that. How could you?" she said swiftly.
"You cannot even conceive of my loving you?"
"I—I can, Philip—it isn't that, I—I"—she was floundering among her own emotions—"I can under other circumstances, different conditions. Oh, don't you see—think of"—she had almost said "Lawrence," but hastily substituted—"my husband."
"I have thought of him. From the day you came, he has haunted my footsteps. But after all, he thinks you are dead."
"But I love him. Think of that, too."
"Oh, Claire, Claire, I have seen you when I felt perhaps you might—might learn to love me."
"Philip, it is impossible!" she cried. "Please don't let's spoil everything now. I so wanted to be just friends."
His faced kindled and his deep eyes glowed with a fire that both terrorized and fascinated her.
"We cannot be that, Claire." His voice vibrated with growing passion. They stood, facing each other, and she trembled like a reed in the wind.
"I saw you this morning in his arms," he was tense and speaking rapidly, "and I knew then that I loved you. Loved you with all the soul of me. I could have killed him, I tell you. Claire, Claire, I love you! You must not deny me love."
She did not, could not answer, her tongue refused to move, and her dry, hot mouth felt as if she would smother. She looked into his eyes and said nothing, while she shook violently.
"Claire!" he cried. "Claire! I loveyou!" His arms closed around her and he held her tightly. His eyes burned into her own with a flame that was contagious in its intensity. She gasped, trembled, and did not struggle, though in her mind she was crying, anguished, "Lawrence! Lawrence!"
He pressed her more tightly, and his body against her own stirred in her a passion beyond the control of will. Her eyes lighted warmly and then closed. She felt suffocated, weak, and her senses reeled. His head bent, and his lips were pressed fiercely against her own parted ones, stopping the cry that rose to her throat. He held her fast, keeping his lips against her own until she felt her strength giving. She half leaned against him, letting the weight of her body sink into his arms.
A savage joy sprang into his eyes. She opened her own and saw. Throwing up her hands wildly, she struck his face, twisted her body free, and shoving him from her, stood, white, defiant, and determined.
She was not angry with Philip, only with herself, but the storm of self-reproach that swept over her burst into bitter, scorching words against him.
"You, you coward! You dare to touch me, to take me that way! If I had only known what sort of a thing you were, you, you viper! Oh, to be here with you!"
His dark eyes flashed with sudden rage, and he moved to seize her. She stood defiantly before him, her white face cold as outraged chastity itself, and his anger died. Into his face came the dejected, suffering look of a man whose passion ebbs before the compelling force of a woman's scorn.
"Forgive me, Claire," he moaned, "forgive me. I was mad, mad."
She knew he was sincere, and she smiled sadly.
"I know, Philip," she said. "I understand, but you must realize that it is impossible. Won't you see that? It was, perhaps, partly my fault. Forgive me if it was, and let us be friends. Philip, I want a friend," she continued. "I need one, a big, strong man whom I can trust, whom I know to be my loyal friend and my husband's friend."
He put out his hand, shame and love mingling in his face.
"I will be that friend, Claire," he said, earnestly.
She took his hand, her mind breaking with relief. She felt she was going to cry, and she leaned forward to hide her filling eyes.
"Oh, Philip, God bless you! You do not know what this means to me! You will never know. I thank you, I thank you!"
The tears rushed down her cheeks and dropped upon their clasped hands.
"Claire, don't, please—please don't," Philip pleaded, anguish in his tone.
She stopped, forced back her sobs, and smiled at him.
"Philip Ortez," she said, "I shall make you glad of this."
Deep in his heart, the words gave him hope. He grasped at them as a drowning man at a life-belt, but he did not voice the hope.
"I want to spend much of my time with you, Philip, in the out-of-doors. I must do it, and it is such a relief to know that I can do it without—without fear. You will be just my friend, won't you?"
"If it is in my power, I will." He spoke as a knight of old, taking a holy vow, and in his heart was the deep, sacred sense of the spirit that still moved in his idealistic soul.
Claire laughed joyously, almost hysterically, with the peace that came over her at the sound of his words. She was sure that all was well. If she had known that already he was building on the promise of frequent days alone, she would have been more afraid than ever. But she did not know that, neither did she know that in her very promise she was preparing a more difficult situation for her own struggle with herself than any she had ever faced in her life. She was only aware of the crisis passed and the peace that was now hers.
"Let us go back," she said gaily.
They found Lawrence smoothing his little carved child with a stone. Claire was effervescent with joy. Her great plan seemedsure of success, and she greeted him with a gaiety that was as abnormal as her despondency had been before.
"Lawrence," she cried, "we have had such a walk! And here you have finished for us this beautiful cherub as the symbol of our little home."
Her words stung him with savage pain, filling him with a great fear born of love and jealousy. For a minute he did not know what he was doing or saying, and he was scarcely aware of the words that fell from him.
"Cherubs are said to be symbols of the greatest love." He laughed tonelessly. "It belongs to you, Claire. Take it."
The child was carved standing upon a stump with wings outspread. In the form and face of the figure there was so much of benevolence, love, and charity that the imaginative power of this blind artist filled Claire with awe. She stood reverently before it, her heart singing with pride in the handiwork of the man she loved. She interpreted his words as a confession that he had carved it for her as a symbol of his love, and she was humbled before him, before his work. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and to tell him with the gift of her unreserved self how grateful she was for his gift, but she only said, very softly, taking both his hands: "Thank you, Lawrence."
The words struck his ear with a strangely mixed power in their sound. He wanted to laugh at the bitter mockery that swept into him. He had made the image for love of her, and he presented it to her as a symbol of her love for Philip. It was cruel, but he could endure it. Oh, yes, he was accustomed to life's little jokes. He did not answer her thanks, only gripped her hands in his own capable ones till he hurt her.
To Philip, the child brought still other suggestions. Moved by his present feeling of great, chivalrous guardianship of the woman who had said she needed him, he felt that it was a symbol of the great sacrificial love which he was privileged to know, and at the same time he felt that it was a symbol of hope.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.Don't forget this magazine is issued weekly, and that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.