In the days that followed they talked but little. Lawrence had fallen into the habit of speaking only when she seemed to desire conversation, and his mind was occupied with planning their escape. If he thought of her in any other way than merely as his eyes, he never showed it. Though watchful of her comfort, in every act and word, he was markedly impersonal.
Following the river, they had progressed steadily north and east over increasingly higher and rougher ground. The tropical vegetation of intertwining crimson was now changing to a faint gold. There were days when they were forced to make long détours over broken ridges to get around some deep gorge through which the gray-green stream dashed its foamy way downward. They were well into the mountains, and above them the higher Andes raised their snowy peaks in forbidding austerity. It was daily growing colder, and their clothes were now only ragged strips. Then came days when sharp, biting winds whipped through the cañon they followed, or headed against them on some plateau, and they were forcedto face new issues. Food was less plentiful, and winter was at hand. To be sure they were in the tropics, but on the mountains the air was cold, and warmer clothes became imperative.
Claire's ankle was almost well. After weeks of pain, which she had borne bravely, it was healing, and the time was near when she would be able to walk. Shoes were absolutely essential for her. Furthermore, Lawrence's own shoes were worn through, and his walking was becoming a continual pain. In spite of Claire's increasingly careful guidance, he stepped on small, sharp rocks that dug into his flesh. He did not complain, but Claire knew that he was suffering. The times when he stepped out freely became more and more seldom, and his face was usually taut.
They were, indeed, a pitiable couple. Lawrence's thin face was shaggy with hair. Claire's once soft skin was now brown and hard. Both were thin and wiry, with the gaunt lines of the undernourished showing plainly.
One morning, to fight the frost that bit into them, they were forced to build a fire long before dawn. As they sat huddled together over it, Lawrence finally broached the subject that had been engrossing both their minds for days.
"Claire," he said thoughtfully, "we can't make it through. We'll have to find a place somewhere and prepare for winter. It's tough, but it's inevitable. I hate to give up now, but it will be even worse for us if we don't get meat, fur, and a house against the snow that will soon be covering everything."
"I know," she said sadly, her thin hands supporting her chin. "It seems as though we had played our long farce to its end. Death is as inexorable in its demands as life." The circles under her eyes were great half-moons.
"We have done well, though," he argued. "We've done better than well. Who would have believed that a blind man and a crippled woman could have come as far as this?"
"I didn't believe it, Lawrence," she said, and her voice and eyes were full of a warmth that had grown of late to be fairly constant. "I didn't believe it, and I wouldn't believe it now if I were told the story back home."
"I'm not sure; I might have," Lawrence said proudly. "I know the blind and their capabilities."
"I'm learning to know them," she admitted, and lapsed into silence.
"Shall we go into camp, then," he asked, as if they had not mentioned anything else.
Claire hesitated, then said slowly: "It's our only chance. Are you willing to spend a winter with me?" Her eyes glanced amusedly at him.
Catching the note in her voice, Lawrence laughed. "It seems inevitable," he said, "and, anyway, I couldn't ask for a better companion. You don't disturb me, and I don't irritate you—that is, not especially."
She looked at him impatiently. "Don't you?" she said, meditatively. "Well, I'm glad I don't bother you."
"Yes," he assented seriously. "You've been mighty open-minded, Claire, and you haven't hampered me with incredulities."
"Oh, that is what you mean."
He moved uneasily, his muscles drawing a little. Claire saw and wondered.
"Yes," Lawrence said shortly. "When morning comes, we'll hunt for a location."
They ceased speaking, each occupied with his own thoughts.
Claire was asking herself what the winter would mean to her, spent with this silent man, and he was questioning how long she would continue to regard him as a mere imperfect carrier, devoid of the stuff that men are made of. Sometimes when her body was in his arms, he had wondered if she was capable of love, but always he had remembered her husband, her social life, her assumption of superior reserve, and had forced himself into a habitual attitude of indifference. The strain was telling on his will, however, and often he longed to make this woman see him as he was. He thought of the old days in his studio when he had proved himself master of blindness in his power to imagine and carry the sense of form into the carved stone. He recalled the praise of his comrades, and over all else there surged in him the swift, warm blood of the artist.
"Lawrence," said Claire suddenly, "at what do you value human life?"
"That depends," he answered, "on whose life it is."
"Well, at what would you value mine?" she demanded.
"From varying points of view, at varying prices. From your husband's point of view, it is invaluable. From your own, it is worth more than anything else. From my point of view, it is worth as much as my own, since without you mine ceases."
"Then your care of me and all your trouble is merely because you value your own life."
"What else?" He moved uneasily.
She ignored that question. "If you could get through without me, would you do it?"
"That depends on circumstances. If I could get through without you, and do it quickly, and could not get through with you"—he paused—"I should leave you behind."
"And suppose, when I can walk, I do that myself?"
He smiled. "As you please," he said quietly. "I advise you to make your estimate well, however. My hands and strength are assets which you might have trouble in doing without."
"And do you estimate the whole of our relationship on a carefully itemized basis of material gain and loss?"
"Claire, isn't that your understanding, stated by yourself, of our partnership?"
"Yes, but—well, it's hard to estimate human companionship."
"I know it." He shifted nearer the fire. "I've tried to estimate yours."
"Indeed?" Her voice was full of interest.
"I've failed. You are worth a great deal, potentially."
"Exactly what do you mean?"
"I mean just this"—he stood up suddenly and faced her, his shadow covering her like an ominous cloud—"that as Mrs. Claire Barkley you are worth nothing to me except eyes, and, therefore, your personality and conversation are of value only as time-fillers."
"Go on," she said steadily.
"But as Claire, the almost starved, ragged human being who is living with me through a prolonged war with death, you are worth everything to me—everything that I value."
"But isn't that what I have been from the beginning?" she flashed.
He answered slowly. "Yes—in a way."
Once more they lapsed into silence. In turn she tried to estimate his worth to her, but failed. She began to recall the men she knew, and concluded that she was without a standard of measurement. One by one she pictured them and cast them aside, as somehow not the scale by which to evaluate this man. At last, she began to think of her husband. It had not occurred to her to think of him in comparison with Lawrence before, and it made her wonder at her doing so now.
She fell to dreaming of the man who had been her lover in girlhood, and her husband and dear companion these past six years. He was surely at home, aching, yearning for the little girl he had lost. She could see him sitting before the fireplace in their big living-room, his head on his hands, his tired face in repose, while he gazed into the flames and longed and longed for her. The picture grew in clearness. She saw the joy that would be his when they met again, and she felt around her those dear arms, crushing her against him in a rapture of reunion. In sudden contrast, she was again conscious of the cold, impersonal arms of the man beside her. As she thought of the difference she hated Lawrence wildly. At least, her husband knew her worth. He knew her golden treasure-house of love; he knew her as she was.
This blind man before her there, unkempt, hard, expressionless, what did he know of her? What could he know, born of poor people, and working his way among inferiors? She almost laughed aloud. Why, at home this man, who had carried her in his arms, would have been one of her wards, an object of her charities. But would he? Lawrence was an artist. She considered that.
"Isn't it light enough to get moving, Claire?" His rich, warm tones broke in upon her thought like a shattering cataract. How musical and vibrant his voice was!
"I think so." She stood up unsteadily.
"Good. We'd better go down nearer the river. We will want a sheltered ravine for our winter camp."
"Very well." She threw her arm over his shoulder. "It isn't far down, and it's clear going. When we start again, I'll be able to walk. And then I'll lead you, Mr. Lawrence." She spoke half in jest.
"And if we are alive, I shall make it possible for you to do so comfortably. I hope for something to make shoes of." He answered with a frank, sincere joy at her being able to walk, and she was ashamed of her anger. He was not to blame for being anxious to have her well, to have felt otherwise would certainly have been to be a fool indeed. She should rejoice with him, for then they could get home that much sooner, home to her husband and her old life. She warmed at the idea, and felt a sense of gratitude toward Lawrence that was good and wholesome. "I have been silly," she thought. "He is really not to be expected to fall and adore me, and certainly I ought not to blame him for being blind. He couldn't help that, either."
"Lawrence," she said aloud, "I am a beastly unjust wretch."
"I don't see it," he protested.
"But you ought to see it. I don't play fair with you."
"You said that once before, I believe. I don't agree any more now that I did then."
"But I think all sorts of beastly things." She could not understand her frankness.
"Oh"—he paused. "So do I. But as I am not a Puritan, I scarcely hold myself responsible to you for my thoughts. One's thoughts are his own, and, as long as he keeps them to himself, he is entitled to as many as he pleases, of whatever variety he prefers."
"Do you think so?"
"Of course, and so do you."
"Yes, I did—but it seemed to me," she faltered, "that in the present case—oh, well, let it go." She laughed nervously, and said no more.
Lawrence wondered at her silence, and wanted to know very much what she thought, but he told himself that after all it was none of his business.
They had reached the river. The water rushed from the mouth of a gorge in rapids that sent its every drop sparkling and flashing over a great rock into a mass of white foam below.
"Oh," cried Claire, "it's beautiful, beautiful!"
He put her down and laughed. "It sounds as if it were leaping from points of light into cloud-banked foam."
She stared at him in amazement. "It is," she said in a subdued tone. "How did you know?"
"One learns," he said carelessly. "And how about a camp?"
Her admiration of him vanished into the commonplace.
"We can't find it here," she said, hiding her appreciation of the scene under her professional-guide tone.
He frowned. "Nowhere close?"
"No. And what is worse, we'll have to go over a mountain. The stream here is rushing right out from between cliff walls."
Lawrence's spirit sank, but he did not show it. "We'd better eat what little we have left and then be off," he suggested simply.
That morning was the beginning of their hardest experience since they first left the beach. Scarcely had they started to climb over the great ridge, which broke into sheer precipice at the river, when a sharp wind rose and cut through their unprotected bodies. Claire drew in against him as close as she could, while he tried to give her more protection with his arms. The slope was steep and filled with loose rocks so that he lost ground at every step. They were forced to stop often, and by noon he was worn out, and they were both bitterly cold. Claire thought they were near the top, so Lawrence nerved himself to press on.
Night found them standing on the crest of the ridge, in the face of a bitter wind; before them, across a small plateau, rose a still higher mountain around the northern side of which a ravine cut its jagged gash away from the river. Claire stared at the scene until her courage broke down.
"We can never do it, Lawrence," she moaned, and her head sank wearily against his shoulder. Her cry was the aching moanof a heart-broken child. The proud, self-contained Claire was gone. It stirred Lawrence strangely, and for the first time a warm tenderness for her came over him. He drew her to him, and tried to comfort her. Her poor undernourished body shook with the sobs that despair and the cold wrung from her, and, though his own hands and body were blue, he tried to warm her. Had he seen the ground ahead of them, he, too, might have given up, but blindness was the barring wall of black which shut out even defeat. He clenched his teeth firmly, and lifted Claire in his arms again resolutely.
"We've got to do it, Claire," he said, "and we will."
She attempted to paint the scene before him in graphic detail, her words broken by sobs. When she finished he started forward.
"We'll follow the gulf," he stated. "We must keep going, Claire. We don't dare to stop."
"We can't. It's dark, and will be black soon," she answered.
"We've got to do it," Lawrence repeated. "It isn't the first night of my life I've struggled against a black so dense its nothingness seemed overpowering."
She strained her eyes through the gathering night to turn him into the smoothest way, lapsing into jerky, habitual words of guidance.
In the darkness they entered the ravine and staggered down to its broken bottom. The time soon came when she could see hardly anything until they were almost upon it, and the white face of a boulder spotting the endless black before her filled her with a vague dread. Often they paused to rest, but the cold drove them on again. Claire almost ceased to direct him, and Lawrence gritted his teeth till they hurt him and forged ahead.
Once he slipped and fell, but got to his feet again and went on. Claire was not injured beyond a few bruises, but she noticed that he limped more than before and her fear increased.
How they ever fought that night through neither knew, but morning came at last and found them still staggering down the ravine. They were almost out of it now and were entering a rather heavy pine forest. Fortunately the gulf they followed had turned around the mountain in the direction of the river, and their desire for water drove them to keep on. To their blue and shaking bodies all feeling had grown vague, tingling, and uncertain. When Claire looked at Lawrence she could have screamed. His lips were drawn back, and his hairy cheeks and sightless eyes flashed before her the image of a dehumanized death mask. Her own face must look like that, she thought, and buried her head on his shoulder. Through that morning he struggled on, faltering, lurching, resting a little, girding himself against the death now so surely at hand. In his mind thought had ceased to be coherent; his starved body, whipped by the cold, was beginning to play with the imagery.
He gurgled a grim little laugh, and all clear thought was at an end. Claire heard and looked at him wonderingly. She knew that she was freezing, and she had resigned herself, but this man, what was he doing? He still lunged through the trees, where, at all events it seemed a little warmer. She heard him muttering incoherent jargon that gradually cleared to speech. "We'll go on, Claire. We'll go on to the end. I've got to do it. I need my life. I need you!"
She started and listened, though even in her present state she grew resentful. "So that was it," she thought; "he's waiting to get me out before he breaks into his love. He wants his rescue as an argument." Then her thinking was broken into detached images. She saw her husband and cried aloud to him. She had pictures flashing in her mind of him, of old scenes, parties, places they had been together, tenements she had visited in her charity work, the beach that morning when Lawrence had found her, and in and through it all she heard words falling from his lips that recalled later, stung her to wrath.
"I need you, Claire," she heard him again, and then, "I shall use you, Claire. You will be my masterpiece. It is you, proud, superior, human, social, intellectual, sexed, vital, you, carrying in your being the whole tumultuous riot of the ages gone, andhiding it under a guarded social exterior, not knowing when in a sentence it breaks through, you, you, Claire, you, the woman!"
He stumbled, regained his balance, and plunged through a fringe of pines, staggered against one, then another, cursed, and went again forward and out into a clearing. She saw it vaguely before them. At first she doubted, then, as he let his hold on her slip, she gripped his neck with arms that scarcely felt the body they closed around.
"Lawrence," she screamed in a voice that was shrill—"Lawrence, a cabin, a cabin!"
He sank down with her clinging to him still. "I know," he muttered, "I've got to find one." Then he lay quiet.
She freed herself and crept toward the house. She was at the back of it, and she was obliged to crawl slowly on hands and knees around to the front. There was a door, she pushed on it, but it did not open. She grew angry at it, and beat against it with her fists, abusing it for its obstinacy. When at last it opened she laughed wildly.
Before her, his tall body, clad in warm, heavy clothes, stood a man whose dark eyes grew wet with tears of pity the instant they saw her. He lifted her in his arms like a child and carried her inside. She had a fleeting sense of being at home, she thought he was her husband and threw her arms around him passionately, then, remembering Lawrence, she murmured as he laid her down, "Out there—behind the cabin!" and was unconscious.
The man turned and hurried out. In a few minutes he came back, carrying Lawrence, and his face was lined with pity at the state of these two human beings.
He laid them together on a wide berth at the side of the cabin and began to work over them alternately. Swiftly and deftly he heated blankets and prepared food. He wound them in the hot cloth, chafed their hands and arms, and forced brandy down their throats.
Lawrence's eyelids drew back.
"The man is blind," muttered the stranger in Spanish.
Claire was looking at him dazedly and reaching greedily toward the kettle that simmered over a great open fireplace.
He brought a bowl of hot savory soup and started feeding them. Lawrence swallowed mechanically, but he could hardly get the spoon out of Claire's mouth.
"Not too much,señora," he said, turning away.
When he looked again toward them they were both asleep. The utter exhaustion of their long night claimed rest. He walked over to Claire and stood looking down at her.
"She was beautiful," he thought. "And he is blind. Ah, well, for her, beauty is again possible, but for him"—he shrugged his shoulders—"it is bad, bad!" he said softly, and, turning to a shelf of books that stood against the wall, he drew out a volume and sat down before the fire to read.
When Claire awoke she stared around her for a few minutes before the events of their frantic struggle came back to her. Her eyes strayed to the figure before the fireplace. Idly she noted the lustrous, wavy black hair and deep brown eyes protected by unusually heavy lashes. It was clearly the face of a thinker, a dreamer, yet there was something sensual about the mouth, potentially voluptuous, abandoned, and suggestive of tremendous passion that slumbered close beneath the brain that was so actively awake. Claire ached, and her body tingled with the unaccustomed warmth. She lay quiet, looking at the fire, her mind still uncertain in its action, weaving sharp, dynamic images about this new personality. While his appearance gripped and awed her strangely, at the same time she felt drawn to him. She turned and threw out her hand. Her host closed his book and looked up, smiling.
"Ah,la señora se siente mejor?" His deep, rich voice, although lighter than Lawrence's, was full of music, but she did not understand his words. Her blank expression told him, and he smiled again.
"I remember, you spoke English," he said with only the slightest accent. "Are you better,madame?"
She answered his warm smile and said weakly: "Much better, thank you!"
"And your husband?" Claire saw that he was looking beyond her, and she turned to find Lawrence at her side. Instinctively she resented his being there. The warm blood rushed to her face.
"He—oh—he will be all right, I trust!" she stammered falteringly, and her host looked puzzled. Her impulse was to tell him that Lawrence was not her husband, but she thought better of it and said nothing about the relationship.
"He had a long, desperate struggle to bring me here," she said instead. "You see, I broke my ankle and he had to carry me."
"Oh!" The man rose, his face filled with respect as he looked at Lawrence asleep beside her.
"From where did he carry you?" he asked.
"From the coast," she shuddered. "It has been terrible!"
His face expressed utter amazement as he repeated: "From the coast? It is a miracle!"
She made no reply, for Lawrence stirred and tried to sit up.
"You'd better lie still," the stranger said kindly. "You deserve rest, my friend." Then, as to himself, he added: "It is the first miracle in which I can believe."
Claire stared at him, and he laughed softly. "Pardon,madame! I am an unhappy seeker after truth," he apologized, throwing a log on the fire.
For Lawrence and Claire the days that followed were uneventful days of recovery from their hardship. Slowly both of them grew stronger and resumed their normal habits of thought and speech. Their host was a gentle nurse, kindly and considerate. Claire assumed her wonted attitude of the cultured woman, a guest in the house of a friend, and the Spaniard met her with the polished courtesy of a cosmopolitan. Lawrence, too, became the usual man that he was, careless of little niceties, indifferent to form, but a charming companion and a delightful guest.
From the first he and Philip became intensely interested in each other. They discovered early that each was a thinker and a searcher in his own way for the one great solution of life.
During the first half-hour Claire had demanded of their rescuer where they were and how soon they could get back to civilization. Philip had laughed gently.
"You are on the borders of Bolivia," he told her, "and the nearest railroad is two hundred miles away. It is impossible to get out until spring. Long ere this snow will have barred the way through the one pass that leads out and we are prisoners—the three of us. You will have to accept the hospitality of Philip Ortez until the spring."
Lawrence had accepted the verdict with calm indifference.
"Oh, well," he said, "it's hard on you, but as far as I'm concerned, one place is as good as another."
"I shall enjoy your company," their host laughed.
After voicing polite thanks, Claire, in her own thought, had rebelled against the situation vehemently. She wanted to get home, she wanted to get away from everything that suggested her last weeks of suffering, she wanted to get away from these men. Her heart leaped to the ever-recurring dream of the husband, whose arms should take her up and hold her warmly against the memory of their separation.
"Then there is no way out?" she asked again.
"None,madame," and Philip Ortez bowed. "You will have to be the guest of a humble mountaineer."
"I shall enjoy it, I am sure," she answered. "It is simply a woman's natural desire for home which leads me to ask again."
His eyes clouded. Claire somehow found herself fancying a tragic mystery in the life of this man, and then rebuked herself for romancing. Certainly, such fancies were not her habit, and she wondered why they were occurring to her.
The cabin stood on the very edge of the forest through which Lawrence had carried Claire the last morning of their long march. Protected by its pines, the little house fronted on a small lake, a place where the river which they had followed widened to ahalf-mile, and stayed thus with scarcely any current save directly through the center. All around the lake the forest stretched its massed green, and here Philip trapped. The lake, in its turn, provided him with fish.
The week after their arrival snow had heaped itself into the ravine and piled up high around the cabin. Ice was beginning to form on the edge of the lake, and their host was preparing for his winter's work. They were too weak to go with him, and he left them in possession of the cabin.
At first there had been an unaccountable awkwardness between Lawrence and Claire, and it had left a reserve which was difficult to overcome. Lawrence had explained their situation to Philip; the Spaniard had been apologetically gracious, but there was something in Claire's nature that made her wish that Lawrence had never been thought of as her husband. Dressed in Philip's clothes, and in the presence of a roof and fire, she felt a desire to be free from the memory of the days when she had clung about Lawrence's neck, and, above all, she felt that she was not able to meet him with understanding. His blindness in these surroundings seemed to set a sudden and impassable barrier between them, and made her ill at ease when she was alone with him.
Lawrence was irritated that she should so immediately react into what he called the old conventional habit toward blind people, and keep it standing like a stupid but solid wall between all their talk. Now that she was no longer dependent on him, she appeared to him more attractive. He thought of her husband, and wondered if Claire's attitude toward himself was tempered with the thought of the man at home. "Surely," he told himself, "she can't be allowing that to come between us, for it is so obviously quite unnecessary." Then he began to wonder how much of her life was centered about her husband. What sort of man was he, and did she love him devotedly? As he thought, there crept into his feeling a sense of irritation against the unknown man who was obstructing his friendship with the woman he had carried half through the Andes Mountains.
Then the longing for his work came over him, and there were times when he felt he must do something. He spoke needlessly sharp words to Claire. Though she concealed her anger, there grew between them a continuous straining born out of mutual misunderstanding and a great submerged tangle of emotions.
One morning when Ortez in snow-shoes and fur had gone for the day to look after his traps, Claire washed up the tin dishes they used, and sat down before the fire opposite Lawrence. His head was in his hands and his face was somber.
"You look sad this morning," she said casually.
"Do I?" he answered. "I'm not—especially. I was just planning a piece of work, dreaming it out in outline."
She looked at him thoughtfully. His forehead was high and broad, she thought, and his hands— Their days in the wilderness rushed back over her. She was angry at the memories they brought her, and doubly angry at Lawrence, as if he only were responsible.
"It's inconceivable," she said calmly, "that you, without seeing, can really carve anything true to form and line." In her voice was incredulity and unbelief.
He rose suddenly, his face white, and said, with an intensity that startled her: "That sentiment is as familiar to me as my name. I have heard it from sight-bigoted people from the days when I made my first attempt to go back to my school work. I am rather weary of it."
She sat staring at him for a moment, then she laughed. She could not have told why she did it, and she was instantly sorry. The blood rushed to his face.
"I shall create that which will forever assure you that I can carve true to the most familiar form and line you know," he said fiercely.
Her face was as crimson as his now, though she felt ice cold.
"What do you mean?" she demanded, her voice unsteady.
He laughed bitterly. In his own heart a fierce volcanic surge was raging which he did not attempt to control.
"Do you think that I, trained as I am to gather fact from touch, could carry you through weeks of hell in my arms, againstmy breast, and not know you, you as you are, Claire Barkley? I shall carve you, you with your cold reserve suppressing the emotional chaos within you, and you will not fail to recognize yourself."
Claire gripped the chair arms. Anger, fear, doubt, then the knowledge that he could do as he said, swept over her in rapidly succeeding waves, and gathered at last into a steel hate that she felt must last through eternity.
"You, you would do that, after I guided you here! You would take advantage of what I could not help, and—and—" she choked, and then said swiftly—"so, under your indifferent exterior you used your touch that way these days! Oh, you—you beast!"
Lawrence laughed coolly. "I could no more help it than I can avoid being here."
"Lies!" she exclaimed. "A gentleman could help it!"
"Perhaps, but not an artist."
"And what of beauty, of your boasted purity of art, is there in that?"
"All," he said calmly. "If you knew, oh, if I could make you see what every artist knows"—he was talking passionately now, his face illumined in spite of his blind eyes—"you would realize, that I could not help it, that I glory in it, and that it was and is the way of art."
He rose and walked the floor, pouring out his creed in a stream of burning words. "I am a machine, a sensitive thing that registers what it feels and knows, that is all. You touch me, my brain registers that touch, and something in me, the will to live, the desire to create, the insistent shout for expression says, 'Take that and carve it in stone.' If I could see, if I were not blind, I would have been a painter. I would have painted you, almost naked as you were, your eyes filled with the hunger for life, your face tense with racing thoughts, I would have painted you fully, all of you, as you were in night-gown and skirt there in that forest, and you would have shouted to all the world from my canvas, 'Look at me, I am the primitive, the wild, the passionate, the tender, the selfish and unselfish living woman. See me as I am, cultured, refined, educated, elemental withal, and the emblem of humanity as it is, still stained with the traditional mud of superstition and blood that marks its origin. Oh, I would have painted you so, and now I shall carve you so!"
He stopped, and Claire looked at him wildly, her eyes aflame with hate and admiration.
"You would use another human being that way?" she gasped.
"I would use any one, I would, I will, at any cost to them, to me, if the outcome be a piece of art, a work that in its truth, its immortal beauty, shall stand a lasting testimony that I, Lawrence Gordon, have mastered blindness and registered life correctly."
A great light swept over her mind; that was the key to him. He would sacrifice himself to conquer blindness—but would he, she wondered, and instantly her thought found expression.
"Would you crush yourself to create that mastery of blindness?"
He laughed. "I have, I am doing it," he said. "I would go through all the torment of the world if I might create something lasting, true, and beautiful."
Claire leaned forward, her lips apart, her eyes bright. That she hated this man she was sure, yet all her woman's soul was awed by what she now saw behind his mask of blindness. Then a new thought came to her.
"Might it not be," she asked subtly, "if you hold suffering to be the key to beauty that you would profit more at last by denying the impulse to create the thing you are planning?"
He laughed again. "I hold that pain is only the spur to progress. I care nothing for the sentimentalism you are talking now. I carried you through the wilderness, I suffered and bore it, I staggered through nights and days with your warm body against mine that I might live, and now—now I know the value of life, I understand as never before the pain our fathers paid. I know the bitter animal war against environment, evolution whipped into action by pain, hunger, fear of death, and I shall carve that, all that, into the statue of one woman."
"And what of me, me and you as such, Claire and Lawrence, who were there through that struggle in the wilderness?" The speech leaped from somewhere in her being before she knew it, and with it came knowledge that stung her into tearful self-hate.
"We shall go back to our old lives, I suppose, and live them out."
It was what she had expected him to say, yet the calm matter-of-fact statement hurt her as nothing he had ever said before.
Lawrence dropped into the arm-chair again, and rested his head on his hand. He was calmer now, and, reviewing in his mind what he had said, he was beginning to ask himself why had he given way to this sudden resentment against Claire. If she doubted him because he was blind, was that any more than others had done? He had never burst out against them. What was the matter with him? He surveyed the whole trend of his life up to this minute: how he had broken at late adolescence from a glowing idealist to a wanderer through varying paths of thought; always stirred, stimulated, and swept on by contact with other people, books he had read, women for whom he had occasional fancies of love, until gradually he settled into his assured manner. It was exercise he needed, that and work.
He asked himself if he seriously loved Claire, and answered unequivocally that he did not. He wanted her friendship very much, indeed, but love, not at all. If she had been single, perhaps—but no, he did not care about her that way, that was all. He had been too long shut up here in the cabin with her and without work. He must get some wood and amuse himself carving things with Ortez's knife; it would be good practise, and, at the same time, relieve his nerves. He was sorry he had let himself go; Claire must not be hurt.
"Claire," he said quietly, "if I wounded you, if I said things I ought not, pardon me! I am getting nervous doing nothing, and I am not myself these days."
She laughed calmly. "Oh, very well!" she said. "I wonder that we don't come to blows, cooped up here as we are. I think next time Philip makes his rounds I'll go with him."
"It would be a good thing," answered Lawrence. "I'd like it myself."
Claire did not keep up the talk. She, too, was thinking fast, and facing new problems that demanded her attention. She was surprised to find that her resentment toward Lawrence was completely gone. What would her husband think of him? What would he do when she returned, when she told him of her journey with this blind man through weeks and weeks of wilderness when they were almost naked. She stopped, that was what Lawrence had said, 'almost naked.' Her flesh tingled as she saw the picture which he said he would like to paint of her.
What would she, Claire Barkley, do if such a picture were painted? She buried her face deep in her hands, but in her heart she knew that she would respect the man who painted it. And if Lawrence carved her so in stone, and did it as he thought he could—she pondered over that for some time.
"I think," she said aloud, and Lawrence raised his head, "that if I were to stay shut up here alone as Philip does, I should go crazy before spring."
"It all depends on how your mind is occupied," he laughed.
She blushed guiltily, and was glad he could not see her face.
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.
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This story began in the All-Story Weekly for October 5.
In the late afternoon, Philip returned to find Lawrence still sitting before the fire, his mind centered on ideas for his future work. Claire had disappeared behind the canvas curtain which was stretched before her bed.
"It is almost Christmas," announced Philip, as he entered.
Lawrence straightened up. "Back again?" he said, carelessly. "It's been a beastly day."
Claire came out from her partition, laughing. "If you don't take one of us with you next time," she said, "I won't answer for the tragedy that may follow."
Philip laughed, and shook the snow from his big coat.
"Too much of your own continuous company?" he asked.
"Yes"—her tone was light, but he saw that she was in earnest—"we are so accustomed to each other that we both need a rest." She drew up a chair for Philip before the fire.
His dark eyes looked searchingly at her.
"If you knew the path to peace," he said, "you would be happier. I see that I musttake you out with me and teach you the hidden entrance to that mystic roadway."
"You know one, then?" Lawrence's voice was amusedly skeptical.
"It lies through the heart of man into the heart of"—Philip paused—"shall I say God?"
"You may as well, though it isn't especially clear." Lawrence smiled. "God is a big, but vague, term."
"I find it so," Philip answered, seriously. "There are days, however, and this was one of them, when I am sure of the meaning of that term. Claire must go forth with me and see."
"Yes, do let me go," she said, eagerly. Then, with a little laugh: "If your mystery out there is as discomforting as the Lawrence mystery in here, I sha'n't worship him, however."
"He isn't." Philip arose and crossed to his books. "He is the mighty God who speaks in solitude." He drew down a volume, and returned to his chair.
"I find here in these mountains the medicine thatHamletshould have had. He would have been noHamlethad he ranged this plateau for a day in winter."
"And the world would be the loser," Lawrence interposed.
Claire rose and started to prepare their evening meal. She had taken over the duties of housekeeping from the time her ankle had allowed her to walk.
"If you two are going to plunge the house into an argument such as that one promises to be," she said gaily, "I am going to reenforce the inner man so that at least you won't suffer from physical exhaustion."
Both men laughed, and one of them listened to her thoughtfully as she moved about, while the other watched her, his dark eyes full of a keen appreciation of her grace and her concise, accurate movements.
"How good it is to have her here," thought Philip. Aloud, he said, seriously: "I do not think the world gains enough fromHamletto make it worth the price he paid."
"Why not?" Lawrence was quick to respond. "Whatever his agony, whatever his failures and his death, he left the world a picture of man's heroic struggles to solve the riddle of the universe, his wisdom, his strength—and his weakness."
"But that is just what we don't want—the picture of man's weakness. It is made all the worse when it is presented with the power of a sublime work."
Claire turned from the stove, and looked at Philip. His eyes were burning with a deep, earnest fire that held her fascinated. She thought him the most beautiful of all the men she knew. It was not his face, not his appearance generally, but his eyes. Oh, the loss of such eyes! she thought—yes, they are what makes him a finer man than Lawrence. Why hasn't Lawrence such eyes?
"Believe me, friend," Philip was speaking again, "if I could erase from my knowledge the weakness of man, I would not need to trail my feet through these snow-buried forests to find an hour's rest from life."
Claire saw his fingers move nervously on the arms of his chair, and thought: "That is it, then; I was right; he has his tragedy." She looked at him again, and as she met his eyes she felt that she was sorrier for him than she had ever been for Lawrence. Yes, she was sorrier for this man whose soul burned out of his eyes than for that other whose soul was always curtained by the expressionless mask that hid him.
"I can't quite agree with you," Lawrence was saying; "I, too, know the weakness of man, but there is, nevertheless, the glory of sublime beauty which alone stands, immortal. I should indeed mourn for man if he were unable to be truly immortal even in his created work. That, it seems to me, saves him."
"Or loses him," Philip added. "One golden life of unbroken sunshine, dead at last and laid away in the memory of friends is worth more than your greatest poem."
"I should call that sentimentality," Lawrence laughed.
"So it is," Philip flashed, "and why not? Must we kill sentiment and go about with hearts of ice because our world is hard?"
"Is there no way to keep ourselves warm without poultices?" retorted Lawrence.
Claire sat down at the table. "Comeon and enjoy your venison, you two, and have done with the ills of the universe."
The two men joined her. It was a strange trio: Claire, a dashing boy in Philip's made-over corduroys; Lawrence wearing his host's summer serge as though it were his own, and Philip looking at them, amusedly.
"I never quite recover from the charm of you in male attire," Ortez remarked, looking into her face.
"I've tried at times since our fortunate misfortune to imagine her in evening gowns and furs," said Lawrence; "but I always fail and end by getting her into some sort of barbaric costume belonging to the distant past."
"You are both flattering and both foolish," she told them. "It's my business to look well in clothes, you know, and it's masculine to admit my efficiency in a particularly feminine line."
"You were scarcely fascinatingly efficient in the garb in which you first appeared to me." Philip laughed at the recollection.
"That isn't fair. I would have been if I had had enough to eat."
She looked at him, and her eyes sparkled gaily.
"I surrender," he said. "You would have been. Too fascinating!"
"That also depends on circumstances," said Lawrence. "She wouldn't be fascinatingly efficient in that back-to-nature garb if she were doing charity work at home or if she were taking a trip in an airplane."
"You carry your point," she agreed. "I shouldn't care to try."
"Which leads me," Lawrence went on, "to observe that our friend, Shakespeare, was, after all, right in bequeathingHamletto us. He might not look well in our own castle, but as a portrait viewed in our neighbor's house, or in a house unspecified, he is the high point of subjective tragedy."
Ortez did not answer for a moment, then he said, quietly: "I had rather lose my winter's work than lostHamletfrom my memory, yet when I think of what there is in life for a man, did he not haveHamlet'sdoubt to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the strength of the war we wage toward freedom."
"Of course," agreed Lawrence, "but that requires only one thing, the master passion to do, because for us, doing is life. I cannot regretHamlet'shesitating failure. It was his life. To every man there is but one way, his way, and whether it be failure or success does not depend upon an avenged wrong, a successful marriage, or even a great work done for humanity. The test is, is his life worth the price he pays to live it? I imagineHamlet'swas."
"Fallacies!" interrupted Claire. "Why, then, the tragedy?"
"BecauseHamletdid not know that the governing laws to which he strove to hold himself were not laws, not true, not necessary."
"You mean," Ortez inquired, "that he was not bound to avenge his father and punish his mother?"
"I mean just that. Why should he? She was satisfied, his father was dead, andHamletgained nothing by his moral strutting and raving against his own hesitating hand."
"But you have swept aside all moral law," protested Philip.
"What moral law is there that is external to me? What, indeed, is moral law?"
"That which makes for life, perhaps, as some one has said," offered Claire.
"For my life, yes. That which to me means life, is good. That which to me means less life, is bad."
"Yet you carried Claire through the mountains," Philip's voice was hard.
"Because I needed her, because she was essential to my life."
"Then you would have left her, had she been a hindrance?"
"That depends," answered Lawrence slowly. "Had she made my life uncertain when otherwise I might have lived, I think I would. Of course, if her being there merely increased my trouble, I should have brought her."
Claire was watching Philip's face. It was a study. On it there was something that made her heart beat faster, she found herself unable to tell why. She glanced at Lawrence. There he sat, his strong, stern face, calm and soulless. She wondered why blindness robbed this man of his rightful appearance. He had a soul, and it was a wild, beauty-loving soul, she knew, but blindness quite mantled it. On the other hand, Philip's was a mighty fire within, which shone in beauty through his eyes. Lawrence had quietly spoken of how he would have left her under other circumstances. Philip would have died at her side, she knew it. What a difference between them!
"But if you feel as you declare, why take that extra trouble to save her?" Philip asked.
"Because I have a certain dislike of death and don't care to cause it myself if I can help it."
Claire laughed. "But death, you said once, is a mere stopping of animal action. Why dread that?"
"Because I myself do not care to die, I would not care to cause your death."
Philip rose and went to the fire. "I do not believe you could live by your theory," he asserted.
"I do live by it. There is but one thing I dread worse than death. I would die rather than give up my creative impulse."
"And he would sacrifice your life or mine for art's sake," merrily added Claire. "It's a good thing he doesn't think we are hindrances to art."
Philip also laughed. "Well," he said, "there might come a time when I, too, would want a thing enough to kill in order to obtain it."
"What, for example?" asked Lawrence. "That is the best way to determine your value of life."
Philip did not answer for a few minutes, then his voice vibrated.
"The things that mean more than life to me. I know that one holds his own life dear, but there are things, love, courage, honor, for example, that he holds even above life."
"Would you kill me, for instance," asked Lawrence pleasantly, "if I stood between you and Claire?"
"That is scarcely answerable," nervously interposed Claire. "You see, you don't and the man who does—though it's all absurd, since we none of us here are the least in love—is my husband."
"I had almost forgotten him," said Lawrence, his voice lingering softly on the word "almost."
Philip laughed. "Why, yes, in the abstract, I should say that if anything would make me kill you, it would be your standing between me and the woman I loved. Of course, the case is fair, but scarcely probable enough to make any of us worry."
"True"—Lawrence joined him at the fire—"and by the way, while I think of it, I want a knife and a block of soft wood. I'm going to entertain myself these days."
Quickly Claire looked up.
"And you shall entertain me, Philip," she said gaily.
Christmas was upon them. They gathered before the big fireplace in silent meditation, while outside the wind whipped sheeted snow against the walls and wailed dismally its endless journeying. They could not help but feel the something melancholy in the air. The little cabin, standing so far away from civilization and all the things they were accustomed to know seemed somehow to set them apart from the rest of the world and leave them stranded as it were, upon a barren stretch of thought.
In keeping with the setting, solemn questions of destiny, death, and the meaning of things took the place of the usual Christmas festival and glitter.
In Lawrence's mind, Claire was growing more and more predominant. He found her constant association weaving itself into his life until, when he looked ahead toward the day when they must part, he discovered himself asking what he could find that would take her place. Her voice, her little habits of speech, the unexpected question that showed her deep interest in him, in his work, and in his attitude toward her, these had gradually stirred in him the desireto establish in his own mind a definite relation toward her which he could maintain.
When Claire went out for a while with Philip, Lawrence spent the interim in trying to reason out his problem. He told himself that he would feel differently in his old environment with friends and work, but the answer was not satisfactory. He knew that even there, he would miss the quick sound of movement, the quick phrase that was Claire.
Did he love her then? He asked himself that, and could not answer. What was love to him, anyway? He sought to think out a scheme of love that would fit into his system of utter selfishness, and failed. The memory of her in his arms came to him now with a warm, emotional coloring that had been absent during the days of their journey.
Had he been so impersonal then at first? He remembered his first wild joy at finding her there in the surf, and he admitted that even then there had been a subtle heightening of his pleasure, because it was a woman. Since his blindness he had been separated from the other sex even more than from his own, and now he was to live with one daily, having her alone to talk to, to watch, to be interested in, and to know—yes, that had been a part of his feeling that morning. He remembered that he had been slightly irritated at her when he had first decided that she was cold and intellectual. He had wanted her to be warm, colorful, vivid, and feminine. He had found later that she was all these things, but not toward him. It was a man whom he had never known, her husband, Howard Barkley, for whom she was wholly woman. Always when she spoke of him her voice had warmed, grown softer, subtly shaded with color.
Claire opened the cabin door.
"Hello, Mr. Dreamer! Still in the land of to-morrow?" she called, taking off her heavy wraps.
"Where's Philip?" Lawrence demanded gruffly, without moving.
"Working over a trap in the ravine. I was a little tired, so I didn't wait."
Lawrence could hear her brushing her hair. He was glad she had returned without Philip. Now at least they would have a few minutes alone.
"Snow bad?" he asked. If he could only have run his hands through that curly mass! The memory of her hair brushing against his face made his temples throb dully.
"Yes, my hair is filled with it. I caught my cap on a branch, and the whole load of snow came down on top of me."
"How old are you, Claire?" he demanded suddenly.
She laughed. "Guess! Don't you know it isn't good form to ask a lady her age?"
"Sometimes you are quite thirty, and other times—"
"Well, go on." Claire was standing at the opposite side of the fireplace with her back to the flame.
"Other times, you are two," Lawrence continued calmly.
"I thought that was coming. Well, just to prove what a really nice person I am, I'll tell you. I'm twenty-six."
"When were you married, Claire?" Her breath tightened at his question.
"Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and the impudence of man passeth all understanding. I have been married exactly six years, three months, and twenty-four days." The last sentence brought the catch into her voice that Lawrence had expected.
"I know you miss your husband," he forced himself to say formally.
"Yes, you see"—Claire hesitated—"ours wasn't like some marriages one hears about. Howard and I were both very much in love." She realized too late the past tense. Had Lawrence noticed it? "I miss him dreadfully," she added desperately.
Lawrence said nothing. He had noticed Claire's slip, and the verb had sent him into a thousand realized dreams. The next instant he was cursing himself for a fool. "Fools, all of us," he thought. "Philip, too, warming himself with dreams of Claire." Before the nearness of the Spaniard's personality, Howard Barkley faded into the background. Lawrence reviewed his own position moodily.
Blind, unable to do the work that Philip did, certainly unable to use the million little ways of courtesy-building as Philip did, his chances were unequal.
Did he want Claire for Claire, or was it only the fighting instinct, the desire to overcome men not handicapped as he was? Would he still want Claire after he had won her? After the intimacies of home life had made her familiar as nothing else could, and had dispelled all romance, all the alluring appeal that sprang from the deepest sex-prompted desire yet unattained, would he still want her? That was the question, and he could not say. The experience alone could tell him—and would that experience ever come?
Claire watched Lawrence's face, the while her own thoughts raced on. It had been love she felt for her husband. She was sure of that. Of course, in the years of their life together, the old, wild passion had gradually retired into its normal proportion, leaving them free to go about calmly and untroubled. But it was there, as she well knew in the hours when they became lovers again. Certainly those hours had been joyous, happy ones, unclouded by any suspicion of mere gratification of impulse or desire. Yes, they had been hours of love claiming its rightful expression over the more constant hours of daily living.
Then she recalled her experience of the night before. She had been dreaming of her husband, but he possessed Lawrence's features, illumined with the glow of Philip's eyes, and she had started into full wakefulness with a sudden sense of her position. Now she sat before the fire, and resolved grimly that no matter what happened she would be faithful to Howard. Of course, she would go with Philip to look after his traps, the exercise was the best antidote to such morbid thoughts, and he would never make advances to her, of that she was sure. As for the days that she might spend alone with Lawrence, he was too self-centered, too much wrapped up in his wood-carving, to think of a woman—and she disregarded the little pang of discontent that accompanied her thought.
Philip was hanging the skins over the door. Claire realized that she had been too engrossed to notice his entrance.
"I break a six weeks' fast to-day"—and he turned toward Lawrence. "Do you smoke?"
"Man!" said Lawrence, springing up, "if I'd known you had tobacco in store I'd have murdered you long ago to get it. I would be a more agreeable companion if I could taste tobacco now and then."
"Pardon me for not thinking to ask you. I was declaring a six months' course in self-discipline for the good of my soul."
"Bring forth the smoke," said Lawrence joyously.
"Unfortunately"—Philip turned to Claire—"a bachelor's storehouse contains no treat for a lady. Your visit was unexpected."
"I shall gain my pleasure through watching you two sink back into a beloved vice," she answered.
"Horrible!" Lawrence sat down, and took the cigarette which Philip produced. "To enjoy seeing one succumb to vice."
"Isn't it characteristic of scandal-loving humanity?" she rejoined.
"And on Christmas Day!" Philip chided her lightly. Then he went on, seriously: "But one should really be above all things save love and gratitude to God on this day."
"I suppose so," said Lawrence, "but it's difficult to determine just where this object of gratitude abides and what He is."
"Is it necessary to locate Him?" asked Claire.
Lawrence breathed deeply with the satisfaction in his cigarette. "I should hate to direct my gratitude toward some one who missed it, and thus have it lost in desert space," he answered.
"It isn't that we need God so much as it is simply the good we gain ourselves," said Philip slowly. "I still follow the old trail for my own heart's sake."
"And does it get you anywhere?" Lawrence's question was characteristic.
"Yes, I think so. I find myself nearer to the source of that which is worth while."
"What is worth while?" Claire asked.
The answers she obtained were the two men revealed.
"The fullest life possible for me," said Lawrence.
"The fullest heart possible for me," followed Philip.
"But you both mean the same thing, don't you?" asked Claire.
"I mean the fullest number of my own desires gratified," Lawrence avowed.
Philip leaned back in his chair and looked at Claire, meditatively.
"If he did as he says, we should have to lock him up," he observed.
They all laughed.
"Not at all." Lawrence was amiably argumentative. "To be sure, if my desires were gratified at your expense, as this smoke, for example"—he laughed—"and on an all-inclusive scale, you might have to resort to personal violence. But, in fact, many of my desires would bring you joy in their gratification, you know."
"I do know," said Philip cordially, "but the danger in your point of view is that it allows for no check. You would sacrifice both of us if it were necessary to gratify your desires—that is, if you lived true to your assertion."
"Perhaps I would. I don't know. There is the weak point in my whole scheme. I evade it by failing to sacrifice you, but I support my theory by saying there is no occasion to do so."
"I don't like your principles," Philip rejoined, "though I admit that my own fail me more often than not."
"Exactly. We humans do fail, and the conclusion to which it brings me is, why hold principles that you find unworkable? I prefer a standard to which I can at least be true, in the main, and avoid self-condemnation, pricks of conscience, and other little inconveniences."
"Such as a sense of duty?" interrupted Claire.
"That above all, Claire," he laughed.
"And obligation?"
"Yes, that too, if you mean a sense of being bound to one because of something he has done in the past. For instance, I am obliged to Philip for his food, his house, my life, and this cigarette, but I scarcely feel that that would imply that I must sacrifice my greatest desire in life as payment if necessary. Of course, it isn't necessary, but if it were, I should refuse."
"I think you would not," asserted Philip.
"I know I would. I rather believe you would also, though it might be that you would not."
"I would sacrifice anything to pay a debt of gratitude." Philip spoke warmly.
"You would—perhaps—but in so doing would you not feel that gratitude was the thing of supreme worth to yourself?"
"Not necessarily. I might even suffer all my life for having done so."
"Impossible. You would either redeem your sense of life's value by a new belief, or you would die."
"Then you think a man can do as he pleases and maintain his self-respect, his personal integrity?"
"He will find some way to make himself feel worth while, or he will cease to be."
"You think that a criminal, or perhaps better, a person abandoned to vice, feels justified?"
"Yes. He creates a belief by which his abandonment is not destructive to himself, or he is converted, which is simply a convulsion of nature for the same end, to preserve his life and make it seem valuable to him."
"Could you, for instance, murder a man, and do it believing that afterward you would somehow make it seem right, or at least so necessary that you would feel as self-respecting and sin-free as before?" Philip was speaking earnestly.
"I should not do so unless I were forced to it, but if I were, I know that I would somehow reconstruct my mental life so that I would still feel existence worth the price."
Claire leaned forward. "Lawrence," she said jestingly, "you have swept away the bulwark of the home, made infidelity easy, and numberless separated families inevitable with your bold, bad talk. Aren't you sorry for all those tragedies?"
He laughed. "Very," he said, "though it was watching such proceedings take place so frequently that led me to accept my theory. Think of the men and women who are unfaithful, who leave their wedded partner for another, and still find life worth while."
"But that is their failure to live true to their principles," said Philip. "It is commonly called sin, my friend."
"It may be, according to their light, but they generally get a new light afterward. You see, I do not believe that God joinsmen and women. I am persuaded that a very natural physical desire does so, and it doesn't follow that the first is the only or best union."
"My husband would simply dread me if I held your view, and I should feel very wary if I were your wife, Lawrence," remarked Claire.
That was the central point in the whole discussion, though none of them were aware of it. Vaguely they felt that they were groping their way toward the future, but they did not allow the feeling to reach a conscious state, and Philip laughingly broke up the talk.
"Here we are," he said, yawning, "the fire is making us all sleepy, we're talking foolishness, and we need exercise. Why not get it? I think we might all of us go out and face the wind for a quarter of an hour, then let it blow us back to camp like three children. I have the skis for us all."
"Great!" Claire clapped her hands in applause.
"It's a splendid idea," agreed Lawrence, and they set forth.
It was hard going against the wind; Philip was the only one who managed his skis very satisfactorily, and Lawrence, of course, had to be assisted, but the crust was smooth and clear, and they made great sport of it. The two men placed Claire between them and crossed hands in front of her, like skaters. The fresh snow-filled air blew into their lungs, and they laughed like boys on a holiday. Claire glanced at the two and thought: "What a pair to be between!" Then laughed again. All the morbidity was gone, she was not thinking follies now, and neither of them was more than a good friend. Philip was thinking that Claire was good to see as she moved along between them, her graceful stroke carrying her over the snow, her cheeks stung red in the wind. Lawrence was not thinking at all. He was simply moving, deeply enjoying the wind and the exercise and the soft, strong little hand upon his own, helping to guide him through his darkness.
When they turned and stood close together, the wind caught them like a sail and sent them skimming before it. The sense of tobogganing was keenly exhilarating. Home, problems, worries, the future, all seemed very simply, very easy, and not at all a matter for long conversations before a hot fire.