This story began in the All-Story Weekly for October 5.
Between men and women who have established what they believe to be an unemotional friendship there nearly always springs up a relation franker than any which is otherwise possible. Such was the experience of Philip and Claire during the days that followed. They took many walks together, and their conversation grew daily more exclusive and more personal.
Lawrence, through ignorance of their situation and jealousy of Philip, grewdaily more dissatisfied. He would hear the intimate ring in their voices and writhe within. The artist felt keenly that he was being set aside, and his eager determination to live and be in the front rank of warring manhood made him determine to win Claire against this man who, it seemed to him, was taking her from him by mere advantage of sight. He felt that they were shelving him as a blind man, a very nice fellow, but quite outside the possibility of any relation with their real lives. He now thought that Claire was kind to him as one is to those whose situation makes them objects of pity.
There were days when he sat alone before the fire in the cabin brooding until he was filled with savage hatred of Philip. He would think of all sorts of impossible means of eliminating this Spaniard from Claire's life; then Philip would come in, talk to him, seem so very normally friendly as man to man, that his reason mastered his fancies and he laughed at himself. He ridiculed his own thoughts with an irony that inwardly grew in bitterness with his growing love for Claire, and he would end by admitting that Philip was only doing what he himself would like to do.
In his fair-minded moments he did not blame his friend. "I should be a fool to expect him to act differently," he told himself. "In this struggle for meat and mate which we all wage, he is doing what any one would do. I who am losing must at least be just to him." He resolved to be just, and in a little while was again ensnaring himself in his own notions. "She is throwing herself away upon this Spaniard," he thought, "while I sit by. If I were not blind, she would see that after all I am the better man. I put all my power into the carving of that little statue, and she knows it is good, better than anything he has done or can do, and yet—she loves him."
He would rise and walk the floor in his tension, knocking into the chairs recklessly. His thoughts would gain speed from his bodily movement, and soon he would rage against the man whose guest he was, against Claire, against life, fate, and blindness. Then suddenly his ever self-questioning mind would demand of him, "Why are you doing nothing, then?" He did nothing because he could do nothing. That was his answer, no sooner made than contradicted, no sooner contradicted than to be restated, "I do nothing because I will do nothing."
Several times he refused to go with them on tramps or skiing trips. When they were gone he would revile himself for his stubbornness and ache because Claire could not see that he had refused with a petulant boy's hope that she would stay with him. "Why should she stay with me?" There was no reason, he told himself, and again he would be off on a mental whirlwind that carried him still farther from reason. He became perpetually sullen, irritable, and discontented. He realized it, thought that Claire would certainly grow to dislike him if he continued so disagreeable, and with the thought became even more disagreeable.
Claire, however, was not growing to dislike him. She avoided him in pursuance of her settled policy, but she thought of him all the more.
One morning when she and Philip were out in the pines together, she observed, casually, "Lawrence doesn't seem to be doing any work these days."
Philip glanced at her carelessly. "Yes. I'm very sorry for the poor fellow."
His pity angered her a little. Lawrence did not need his sympathy. "I think he must be feeling badly," she replied.
"I believe he is moody by nature."
"Oh, do you? I hadn't thought so," she objected.
"It is not strange," Philip went on; "he is so limited by his blindness and so ambitious that the effect is almost sure to be a disgruntled mind. He cannot hope to overcome his blindness, and he ought to realize it. I think that is the cause of his odd philosophy. He certainly would be happier if he could get a more sunlit view of things. He needs optimism, and he ought to practise it."
For a moment, Claire was silent. She was not willing to admit that Lawrence was unable to conquer blindness or even that his beliefs were altogether wrong. She had more often disagreed with him than not, but now for some reason she found herself desiring to support his convictions.
"I don't agree with you," she answered Philip, a little shortly.
"Well then, what is my lady's diagnosis?" He had not noticed her curt reply, for he was thinking of something else and was not really interested in Lawrence as a topic of conversation.
Claire was unable to answer; she disliked both his tone and his expression, but she had nothing to substitute for his explanation.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes through the trees before she ventured a little lamely, "I don't know what to say."
Philip looked up, smilingly. "To say about what, Claire?" Then he remembered, and continued hastily, "Oh, pardon me. I know, of course. About Lawrence. If I could suggest anything to do, I would. He is an interesting friend, but I have nothing to offer. It seems to me that we can do no more than to let him alone. He will work it out for himself. If he does not, we cannot help. He would not expect us to do so."
"That's no reason we shouldn't try," she flashed, "unless, of course, you quite agree with his argument after all."
Philip colored slightly and said, "I admit the fault, Claire, but what can we do?"
"Couldn't you get him to tell what's the matter?" she asked, groping for something to say.
"No more than you could. Perhaps even less easily. You know him better than I and understand him better."
She laughed, a little satisfaction warming her at his words. "Sometimes I think I understand him, sometimes I know I don't. As he himself would say, it is merely a matter of blind psychology, is it not?"
"It is not," she answered positively. "It's more a matter of artist psychology, I think."
"Perhaps," he admitted; "certainly the combination is difficult."
"I do wish we could do something for him."
"He would be better off if he would come out with us, but since he will not, he will not." Philip's tone showed clearly that he was inclined to let the matter drop.
But not so Claire. "You are willing to help me, aren't you, Philip?"
"Why yes, if there is any way in which I can be of service."
"We might stay and talk with him more."
"That is useless, I fear," he said abruptly, his own wishes revolting against sacrificing his companionship with Claire or against sharing it with Lawrence.
"He was unhesitating in his care for me those days we wandered," she remarked simply.
"Pardon me again. I forgot for the time that you owed him anything."
"He doesn't consider that I owe him anything. It's simply that I want him to be as happy as possible shut up here with us away from his own kind of life."
"Oh!" Philip looked at her thoughtfully. "Do you think he could be happier with other people?"
"I'm afraid so," she answered, a little regretfully.
Philip's eyes searched her face. "I should think you could satisfy any one's need for companionship," he said, quietly.
"Don't flatter, Philip. That was a very silly speech."
"Was it? It was not flattery at any rate. It is my feeling about you."
"Please," she said, stopping, "let's not go into that again."
"Very well, but why cannot my lady extend her charity? There are other unfortunates besides Lawrence who have troubles to face."
"Oh, Philip, you really haven't any troubles. You merely imagine you have."
He laughed, a little bitterly. "I suppose a life's happiness is a small thing."
"It isn't, Philip," she protested. "But you can get out and tramp and trap and see things, and, after all, you don't really love me as you thought you did. We've settled all that."
"I know we have," he agreed. "That is, you have."
She looked him over, angrily. "So this is the outcome! I ask you to think of another person who needs our care, and you disregard him for your own little troubles!"
Philip looked down and flushed crimson."Well, it does seem as if I were selfish. I am afraid I am. But I do not mean to be. I can talk to him if you wish."
"You needn't," she said, angered still more. "It isn't charity I'm asking you to bestow on him. He doesn't need that, and you ought to know it."
She had laid more emphasis than she intended on the word "he," and Philip's face darkened.
"I see," he said coldly. "It is I after all to whom you are charitable. Thank you."
Tears of vexation came to Claire's eyes. "Oh, I do wish you'd be reasonable," she said, half angrily, half pleadingly. "Don't you understand that I am giving you more frank friendship than ever I gave any man in my life? Isn't that of any value to you? Don't you realize how unfair you have been to Lawrence?"
His face grew suddenly white, as he said, "Do you love him, Claire?"
She did not look away from him. "If I did, would it concern you?"
He took one step toward her, then stopped.
"Yes, it would," he answered.
Her anger almost mastered her, but she controlled herself.
"Philip, are we two irrational animals going to spoil everything? I had hoped you might at least allow our companionship to live."
He looked at her without answering. Finally, he choked, "Don't—don't, Claire, I have the right to know."
"If I promise to tell you when there is anything to tell, will you be satisfied?" She felt no scruple of conscience at her pretense of indifference to Lawrence, only a sense of protection for him. She did not know from what she was protecting him, but the feeling gave her a strange pleasure.
"I will," Philip returned, simply.
"And in the mean time will you help me pull him out of his slough of despond?" she asked, smiling with the old, frank, intimate manner.
"Surely I will, though I confess I do not see the way."
"Then shall we go at once and begin our cheering process, my friend?" she said, as though she were conferring a favor by the use of the word.
He winced at her immediate application of his promise.
"Perhaps we would better," he answered sadly, and turned toward the cabin.
As she walked by his side she had already dismissed him from her attention and was busy planning what she might do to make Lawrence happy.
When they entered the cabin, Claire looked eagerly about the room. As she glanced around, her face clouded. Lawrence was gone. His coat and hat were not on the rack, and the cane which he had carved one day from a stick which she had brought him from the woods was also missing.
Claire walked slowly into the room, her mind filled with an unaccountable apprehension.
"Why, how abandoned the place seems without Lawrence! Where is he, I wonder?" She tried to appear casual.
Philip followed her in and placed a chair for her. His mind, already touched with the potential jealousy that Claire's talk had begun, leaped ahead at her words and he felt more than ever doubtful of her attitude toward Lawrence. Though he quickly dispelled his fear, the thought left behind, as such things do, the readier soil for a stronger weed to spring up in.
"He has gone out for a walk, I suppose. Doubtless, he will be back soon." His voice was indifferent. "Will you not sit down, Claire? You stand there looking about you as though you had lost something."
She was on the point of saying she had, but checked herself, and accepted the chair.
"It's so unusual. He never did this before." Claire forced a smile.
"Well, he will be the better for it; I am glad that he has gone out," Philip answered.
"I know, but it is so difficult for him to find his way through the snow," she said. "He told me it muffles sounds until he is almost helpless in it. His feet can't feel the ground, and he doesn't know which way to turn."
"He cannot possibly go far, and he cannot get lost." Philip's tone was becoming a little edged.
"All the same, it worries me to have him out this way."
Philip started toward the door.
"Shall I go search for him?" His voice, unknown to himself, was heavy.
Claire glanced at him quickly. Her intuition told her he was jealous, and she saw he was angry. She wanted to shout at him, "Go find Lawrence!" and she was surprised at the sudden panicky nervousness that seized her. But she rose calmly and crossed to the fireplace, saying as she sat down, "No, thank you; I think he is able to take care of himself."
Philip also seated himself.
"I think he is," he said. "Certainly he thinks so, and comes near enough to proving his assertion."
She was both angry and pleased with his words.
"I never saw a man less handicapped by misfortune," she remarked.
"He does do very well."
"Lawrence seems all capable sense-nerves, and he is so very efficient with his touch. What a keen appreciation of beauty he has!"
"I think he does remarkably well."
"In the hills he used to describe scenes to me, and do it accurately just from their sound; running water and wind in the trees," she went on, not noticing Philip's short replies.
"Yes, that is quite surprising."
"He certainly has taught me a great deal about blindness."
"Association with him does do that."
"Do you know, I believe he is one of the most unusual men I have ever known."
Philip rose quickly.
"Doubtless. He is not the only topic of conversation our friendship permits, is he, Claire?"
She looked up at him, and rose immediately, her eyes flashing.
"I think you are more selfish with your theories of altruism than he with his egoism."
Philip looked quietly back at her.
"Perhaps I am where the woman I love is concerned."
Claire turned away and walked angrily toward her room.
"I see you can't maintain a friendship," she exclaimed.
"Meaning, you cannot." Philip's voice was bitter.
She turned quickly and looked at him.
"What do you mean?" she asked him, fearing.
"I mean that you are unfair. You ask me not to talk of my love, you wish to talk friendship, while you are forcing me by your every word and act to think of my own misery."
Claire stood aghast before him. His words seemed to her to be an accusation so grossly false that she was stunned beyond anger.
"I don't understand," she said anxiously.
"You ought to understand. I love you, I cannot help but love you, fight it as I will. You say you cannot love me because of your husband. Yet your talk is not of your husband, but of this blind man. You say you desire friendship, yet you allow me all that a woman allows her accepted suitor."
Claire was appalled. She stared at him in amazement, faltering.
"Why, Philip, I—what is the matter? I don't do any such thing."
He laughed.
"Of course not," he replied. "You look at me with that warm light in your eyes, because you think I am not human. I am a mere duenna, a chaperon, perhaps."
She sank into a chair and covered her face. "I didn't think," she moaned, and could say no more. A thousand memories of her intimate treatment of Philip swept through her mind. She had considered him as one of her own family, without thought, without intent, because she had believed so strongly in his assurance of friendship. After a pause, she gathered her thoughts.
"Philip, I may have done as you say," she spoke slowly, "but it was not because I was not conscious of your manhood. It was because I thought you stronger than you are. I believed you could be my friend and not ask more."
He stood quietly looking at her where she sat.
"And what of him?" he asked, steadily.
"I am worried about him because he is blind, nothing more." She lied, looking straight into his eyes, then rose and stepped behind the curtain.
"Claire," he almost sang. "I am deeply, humbly, a thousand times sorry. You cannot know how your talk of Lawrence made me wild. I am a fool, I will admit, but I cannot think of your loving him, blind, selfish, egoistic, intolerant of other people, I cannot."
"You needn't," she returned, coldly. Her whole soul was filled with rage. She was recalling that he had said her eyes were alight when she looked at him, and she told herself that it was not true.
"Won't you give me a chance to show myself as I am, Claire? I want to prove to you that I am not a selfish beast."
She thought of Lawrence's cynical view of Philip's sentiments, and she laughed.
Philip groaned, and then said again, "Aren't you fair enough to do that, Claire?"
"And what will you read in my eyes next?" she inquired icily.
"Whatever is there?" he answered.
"But your imagination spoils your sight," she returned.
"Perhaps. I will not deny that I am not myself where you are concerned. But I ask only for one more trial. And I will do my best."
Claire was growing more and more worried about Lawrence. What could have happened to him?
"Then go and find Lawrence," she said suddenly.
Claire heard Philip leave the house, and she sat down on her bed to wait and think. It seemed ages that she sat there, her imagination busy with a hundred possible calamities. When she finally heard the door open she was almost afraid to look.
"Lawrence!" Her voice was full of warm gladness.
He was hanging his hat in its place.
"Hello, Claire. Back, are you?" His voice held the impersonal, sullen note that he used of late. "Where is Philip?"
"Why, didn't he find you?"
Lawrence was immediately angry. He thought, "Why should Philip be hunting for me? I don't need his care. Can't I even go out without a guardian?"
"I didn't see him," he returned, aloud.
"I sent him to find you." She was standing looking at him, her whole figure expressing love and relief at his return.
He was too angry to catch the fine warmth of her voice, and his inability to see handicapped him more at that moment than at any time in his life.
"I sent him to find you," she said again.
"He didn't. I came back as I went, alone."
"Lawrence, what is the matter with you?" she asked, pleadingly, with tears in her voice.
He felt the emotion in her words, and was suddenly contrite. If he had known it, he was acting like the sentimentalists whom he ridiculed, but he suffered from the egotist's fate, he did not recognize his own failing.
"I don't know that there is anything the matter, Claire. It angered me to think that you still imagine that because I am blind I need a guardian," he said, dropping into a chair.
She came over toward him, impulsively.
"That isn't the idea at all," she said, still very worried. "It was simply that you told me yourself that you were helpless in the snow."
"I didn't ask to be cared for," he snapped.
"I wasn't caring for you—nor about you," she retorted, in sudden irritation. "I didn't want you to be lost, that's all."
"I should think you'd be glad to see me gone." He was a little ashamed of his own words, but he did not try to remedy the speech.
"What do you mean?"
He smiled ironically. "Even a blind man sometimes sees too much of lovers."
Claire sank into a chair and struggled against the starting sobs. It seemed to her that her whole life was becoming onecontinual argument wherein she was accused and in return forced to demand explanations.
"What in the world do you mean?" she faltered. "Are you saying that Philip and I are lovers?"
"Aren't you?"
"Of course not! It isn't like you to say that. And what if we were?"
"It wouldn't be any of my business, would it?" He was bitter.
"I suppose not," she said, weakly.
"You needn't be hesitant about admitting it. It's true," he went on. "Why shouldn't it be? I am a mere piece of excess baggage which you are too kind-hearted to eliminate. I know that, too. Why shouldn't you eliminate me?" He smiled, satirically. "If I were Philip Ortez, loving you and loved in return, I would feel like killing the blind man, whose presence hampered."
She stared at him, wondering if he were in earnest.
"Then it's fortunate that you haven't the opportunity to feel that way."
"Obviously." He laughed, sullenly. "I sha'n't, because you couldn't love a blind man."
Claire only sat and looked at him, thrilled with the knowledge that he was about to tell her he loved her. She was trembling and desperately afraid of herself. She moved uneasily, and against her will; her lips said, "I could love a blind man, Lawrence."
He sat up and clenched his hands together quickly. The tone of her voice in itself was a direct confession. But his deep skepticism of blindness would not let him believe that he was right.
"Do you mean that you do love me?" he demanded.
She wanted to say "Yes," but she thought of Philip and was afraid of what he might do, should he learn of her lie. Then, too, there was her resolution to go back to Howard. Strange that her long-planned friendly explanation of her own attitude did not occur to her, but it did not.
Lawrence rose and came toward her, his hands out. He was determined to know, once and for all. The gathering emotion in his breast was growing into an unbearable pain.
"Claire," he said, coming nearer and nearer. "Could you love me?"
His hands were almost to her. She saw them coming; terror, love, happiness, anguish, and the desire to be his paralyzed her will. She did not move.
"Yes," she whispered, "I could."
He put his arms around her and lifted her until she was crushed against him.
"Do you love me, Claire?" he asked, tensely.
She did not answer, but her head sank against his shoulder.
Outside the cabin, she heard Philip's step in the snow.
"No!" she cried frantically, filled with dread. "No, no! Let me go!"
Lawrence, too, heard, and released her, stepping back indifferently, as though just going toward a chair.
The door opened, and Philip entered.
"Oh, you're back, I see." The artist was coldly cordial in his greeting.
"And I see you, which is more important," Philip laughed.
"I suppose so." Lawrence sat down, thoughtfully. "Claire has just scolded me for going out. She doesn't like to have me add to the bother I am already."
Claire was still under the spell of her own emotion, and she resented Lawrence's sang-froid. He was as cold as a block of stone. Her heart cried out against him because he could not see why she had said "No" to him, because he believed her! She wanted to cry, but did not dare.
"I told him we were worried," she said, indifferently.
"So we were." Philip was cheerful and friendly.
Lawrence buried himself from them both, and sat brooding, clothed in the blackness that blindness brought when it suddenly loomed before him as the wall between him and his life's desires. The brief instant Claire had been in his arms had made him feel that his life was intolerable without her, and that blindness was the curse of a double living death. She had told him that she did not love him. She had struggled to be free.
Lawrence failed to read Claire aright because he had not seen her, and because his blindness made him uncertain of himself.
That was the truth of it all, the awful truth of his life.
He was always uncertain of himself because he was afraid of blindness. He strutted, boasted, lied, and above all pretended to himself that he believed his hard philosophy because he was afraid, afraid of failing to do the things he wanted to do. He saw himself clearly now, he was a coward, a deceiving ape, a monkey caught in the terror of tangling roots, and denying it. He barked like a frightened dog, at the thing that was his master. He was gripped by life, tortured by life, denied death by life, and cheated by life of living. His imagination, fired by his passion, leaped into play, and he felt himself a thousand times a slave, a chained prisoner in the hand of circumstance.
Philip was laughing gaily, and talking to Claire, who listened, answered, and was all the while lost in her own thought. When he had entered, Philip had looked quickly at the two to see if there was aught between them, and had found Lawrence colder, more despondent than ever. He told himself that Lawrence had evidently pleaded with Claire for her love and been denied. At least, this blind man had not been successful, and Philip could afford to be good-humored. The more agreeable he was, the more Claire would turn to him from that dark, ungracious form yonder. His would be the victory of pleasant manners. Therefore he talked, gladly, smilingly, while Claire listened, or seemed to listen.
She was rebellious at the fear which had made her cry "No" to Lawrence, and at the same time glad that she had done so, afraid of the future, exasperated with Philip for coming in at the supreme moment, and angry with Lawrence for his stupidity.
Perhaps these tangled relations might have been cleared had it not been for a piece of folly more stupendous than any they had yet experienced. This event occurred the day after Lawrence's walk in the snow.
Philip had stepped out for a few minutes to look at a near-by trap, and Claire and the artist were left alone for the first time since her denial. She wanted him to renew his suit, feared that he would, and sat waiting for him to speak.
But he remained silent, and at last she said, "Lawrence."
"Well?" He did not move.
The psychology of woman has been too often commented upon and attempted by those who thought they could explain. Why Claire was doing and saying what she did, she herself could not tell.
"Lawrence, don't you ever, ever act as you did yesterday again."
He smiled. "It would be dangerous if your gallant should come in less slowly." He was filled with a desire to hurt her.
Claire was angry with him for saying what was so utterly far from her mind and so different from what she wanted him to say.
"If my gallant should come in," she thrust coldly, "he would scarcely appreciate the melodrama you are playing."
Lawrence sat up with a jerk, his rage near the boiling point.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "I have not interfered with your delightful episode, have I?"
"No, and you couldn't. I mean that my husband—he is my lover—for I know that is what you intend by 'gallant'—would scarcely appreciate the type of man who mopes and abuses the woman who does not care to lie in his arms."
Lawrence sat still, while a fierce, uncontrollable rage consumed him. He felt that to take this woman and whip her into submission would be a pleasure. He thought of the lash he had in his studio at home and wished it were in his hand. With the thought he rose and stepped swiftly toward Claire, his teeth set.
She saw him, and rose.
"I have one way of showing you who is master," he began, and stopped.
She had stepped forward and was standing almost against him.
"Even blindness does not allow you the freedom to threaten."
He shrank back and dropped once more into his chair.
Claire was talking rapidly, savagely. Later she was to be thrown into a despairing self-hate that kept her many a night in tears, but now she went on.
"Do you think I will overlook everything in you because I pity you? There have been times when your impositions, so carelessly thrust upon me, because you were selfish, because you knew I must accept them from you, were almost unbearable. The touch of your thief-trained hands to steal from everything its beauty and self-respect has galled me beyond all endurance. My body has received its last vile grasp from you."
She stopped, appalled at his expression. She did not know, neither of them knew, that love, the ever-changing impulse of creation within men and women, speaks its desire through bitter scorn and abuse, when softer words are too slow in finding their way.
He was sitting there, white, anguished, cowering under her tongue, his whole life shaken. Her words made him feel that the thing she said was true. He had always feared it, realizing that in a measure it was inevitable, and his great strength was now turned against himself, against his bitter handicap, and he was in that tremendous upheaval that requires a rebuilding of one's faith. His belief in himself was broken. His belief in his power was gone. Coming after weeks of thought and fear about blindness, Claire's words tore him asunder and made him feel that there was nothing for him but abject misery and dependence upon charity.
Instinctively, his hand went up as if to shield him from a blow, and he murmured, "For God's sake, Claire!"
There was to come a time, later, when experience would have taught him that there is a wild strain in the nature of human hearts which abuses out of a desire to be conquered. He did not yet realize that he had spoken truly when he said that this woman had hidden in her the savage warring sexed tumult of all the struggling ages.
She saw him there, his hand up, and suddenly her emotion changed. It was love, still love crying out for expression, but now she was all compassion, tenderness, and fear. She read in his face what she had done, and her heart was gray with the pain at her own failure.
Now all love for her was buried, perhaps dead, under his shattered selfhood, slain in the wrecking earthquake that she had brought to pass with the ardor of her passion. She had meant to sting him into taking her in his arms and forcing her to love him, and instead—"Oh, God!" she whispered, and slipped behind the curtain to throw herself on her bed and weep with heart wrung by self-condemnation and loving pity for the man whom she had clubbed with his own dread weakness. She had shattered into chaos the strong soul of the man she loved, with the only weapon he would have felt, and she realized now that it was her love, her desire to be his, to be his utterly, that had led her to do it.
Lawrence was too hurt to move. His mind repeated again and again the words she had spoken. He kept saying to himself: "Blindness has made me that, an egotist beggar." He did not reproach Claire. She had swept him too far from his habitual moorings for that. There was no rebellion against her, none, indeed, against life. Over him rolled wave after wave of self-contempt, distrust, and anguish that shook him with an agony that only the assured man knows when the one he loves most of all on earth strikes dead his faith in himself. He thought of a multitude of things that stabbed anew, but not once did he move in the interminable period that passed before Philip returned.
When he did come, the Spaniard was amazed at the crouching, white-faced man whom he found before a dying fire. There was something so sad in the blind face that Philip felt no suspicion and no anger. He looked for Claire, but she was not visible. He stirred the fire and set about preparing supper while his mind began digging at the problem which he saw in the attitude of the man there in the chair. Claire did not come out to help. She was too exhausted from the storm that had swept over her. In her bed she could hardly smother the scream that kept rising to her lips. She wanted to spring up and cry aloud to Lawrence for forgiveness. She was scarcely aware of Philip as he moved about.
She could have thrown herself at Lawrence's feet and pleaded with him. She was discovering that her whole wild outbreak was a strange expression of her physical desire for this man whom she loved, and the discovery made her as self-detesting as she had been violent in her outbreak. It seemed to her that there was nothing, nothing she would not do to make amends to Lawrence for what she had said. She wanted to tell him what it had been that prompted her, but she dared not lest in revulsion at her viciousness he turn on her and kill her.
"God, God," she muttered, "what have I done!"
Philip was calling her to supper. She steadied her voice, and said humbly: "I can't come out. I'm not feeling very well. Go on without me, please."
She heard him speak to Lawrence, and she strained her ears to catch the answering movement toward the table, but there was none. At last Philip spoke again in a voice that was full of anxiety: "Lawrence, what in God's name has happened?"
Lawrence was moving now, and she waited with bated breath for his answer. He walked to the table and sat down. His voice was heavy. "I've found myself out, Philip. That's all. I know what I am."
There was a moment of silence. Claire covered her mouth with her hand to suppress a cry. She wanted to shout: "No, no, no, not that, but what I am, my beloved, my adored one."
"What do you mean?" Philip's voice seemed stern.
"I mean that I am indebted to you and Claire for the truth I needed."
Behind the curtain Claire turned on her face and burst into sobs.
Philip arose abruptly. "Lawrence," he said quietly, "I do not know what has happened to you this afternoon; I do not know what you mean; but this I do know: I am deeply sorry if anything I have done or said has made you feel that you are an unwelcome guest in my home."
Lawrence stood up and gathered his scattered senses.
"Philip, I beg your pardon, old man. It isn't that at all. The truth is"—and his voice broke—"I have lied to myself and to the world these many years. Much of it hasn't been my fault, but I must pay the price just the same. I am blind. That has led me to a sort of clamorous egoism which carried me on and on until I came to feel that I was really doing something. At last, I know that I am a narrow human parasite, worthless, utterly worthless. A blind, clinging, grasping, vagrant beast, fed upon the mercy of too kind-hearted humanity. I am sorry. It isn't my fault, but it is so."
Philip stood for a few minutes in silence. "You're ill, Lawrence," he said finally. "Get back to yourself if you can. Things do not stay at this point in human abasement. I know of what I speak. I have been through that myself. I cannot say anything comforting. No one can."
They went to bed with but a few commonplace remarks, and the cabin became silent. Lawrence lay awake through that night. Claire, unknown to him, spent her vigil in a great readjustment of her life.
It is always the little things in human relations that have the most far-reaching results. Claire might have avoided much trouble with a few well-chosen words to Lawrence, but her own mental state prevented her from speaking.
On his part, Lawrence was so shaken by her outburst that his love for her was driven deep into his subconscious self, and for the time it lay there dormant. After the sudden volcanic upheaval of his entire universe, he was utterly absorbed in the immediate task of reconstructing his faith in himself. The primitive stages of his thinking did not allow for any relation between himself and the woman who had released the dam of self-abasement. She was unavoidably at hand, reminding him of her speech, and that alone delayed what otherwise would have been an unconscious process.
Claire was not able to forget the intense desire which, she now realized, had prompted her terrible diatribe. Humiliation held her in its throes, and she was reserved, distant, and unnatural toward him.
Philip saw it all, and his mind was filled with conjectures which made him less and less charitable toward Lawrence, more jealous, and more hopeful of a happy issue of his love for Claire. She turned to him eagerly for companionship. Instinctively she sought refuge from her own thoughts—and from Lawrence—by talking to Philip.
The morning after the incident between Lawrence and Claire there had been an austere reserve in the cabin. Claire had fled from the oppressive gloom into the open. Outside Philip joined her, and they walked together in silence. He was determined not to ask Claire what had happened, although he was extending her a silent sympathy which she felt and a little resented.
Lawrence, left alone in the cabin, gave small heed to their departure. He had risen with a frightful headache and a fever. He lay on the bed and thought of his situation, his past life, and his future chances, in bitter, heartrending, self-condemnatory sarcasm which made his condition even less tolerable than it would have been otherwise.
"I am a miserable groveler at the feet of humanity," he thought, "clutching at shrinking shoestrings for a piece of bread in pity's name. If I could see, God, if I only could!"
He thought of all the little things which his blindness made it absolutely necessary for others to do for him, and his excited mind magnified them into colossal proportions. If his landlady in New York had removed a spot from his clothes, as she had often done, that was a proof of his despised state. He fell to imagining that he was unkempt, dirty, disgustingly unclean, and that people had tolerated it because they had pitied him. At last, with a cry of anguish, he thought: "And my work, too, it is a botched mess which they are amused at and do not dare to tell me the truth about. It, too, is a jest that the world is having at my expense." He remembered praise and prizes that he had won in contests with other students, and he was too excited to see the folly of his answer: "That was charity, the award of kindness to me. I know now what they thought—that for a blind man the thing was nearly enough correct to be interesting and quite amusing."
His body felt hot, and he went outside to prowl about in the wind and snow, like a despairing beast. His mind kept up its terrible work, and he did not notice the continual drop in temperature. Round and round the cabin he walked, instead of going into the forest, as he would have done the day before. In his mind was a sudden doubt of his own ability, and he said that Claire had been right to keep him in. She was more aware of his pitiable weakness than he. At last, however, from sheer weariness he went inside. He was chilled through, but instead of rebuilding the fire and warming himself, he rolled up in a blanket and lay on the bed, chilling and burning by turns.
In the mean time Claire and Philip were discussing the man in the cabin. Philip had finally broken the silence by saying: "Claire, you needn't feel so about whatever has happened. Remember he is blind and must be treated less critically than other men."
She knew that that was just what had made Lawrence so deadly white when she had spoken, and it filled her with sickening pain. She answered unsteadily: "That isn't true. It isn't Lawrence, anyway, it's myself who should be condemned."
Philip was thoughtful. "It is like you to take the blame on yourself. You are so kind-hearted that way."
In her present state, his words seemed like a reproach. "Philip, don't," she said sadly. "I know better than that."
He persisted. "No, you do not. You are too sympathetic, and you let your heart get the better of you."
"I wish you wouldn't talk that way," she repeated. "You wouldn't, if you knew the truth."
"Of course, I do not know what happened," he said, "but I do know you—even better than you know yourself."
"Do you know what I've done?"
"No, and I do not care. It was right, I am sure. The queen can do no wrong." He was intensely serious.
"Isn't there any common sense left in you, Philip?" she railed. "Have you gone clear back into medieval nonsense in your feeling toward me? I tell you, you are indulging in foolishness."
"Am I?" He smiled. "Well, if that is the best I have to give—"
"I don't want you to give me anything."
"But I cannot help it, neither can you."
"I have killed a man's love before this," she answered bitterly.
"But you cannot kill mine. I love you, whether you love me or not. I am proud to acknowledge my unreturned love."
"As you please." Claire stopped suddenly. "Are we apt to get anywhere with this subject?" she asked ironically.
"I don't know. I earnestly hope so."
She looked at Philip thoughtfully. Perhaps the truth about her own weakness might cure him.
"Suppose I allowed you to love me, and you found that you had won a woman whose passions were her whole life. Suppose she should prove to be a mere bundle of sex, all polished over with other people's ideas, a social manner, and a set of morals which she did not really feel, which were deceiving ornaments hiding her soul. What would you think of your prize?"
"I should not love such a woman. I could not."
"But suppose you were deceived and thought her other than she was."
"I hardly expect such a thing to happen. Why suppose?"
"Because if I were your wife you might find it to be true."
Philip laughed aloud. "Claire, how preposterous! Are you trying to kill my love for you with such terrifying pictures of depravity?"
"I wasn't trying to do anything. I just wanted to know."
"Have you been answered?"
"Yes, you are like all of your type; you are in love with what your own desire chooses as an ideal, and then you shout, 'Behold, I am not a sensual lover!'"
He stared at her in amazement. "What sort of a thing do you think I am?"
She laughed carelessly. "A man. And what do you think I am?"
"A very strange woman, but a dear one," he said earnestly.
"Why strange, Philip?"
"Because you talk of love as Lawrence might."
She winced. "He would know," she said. "He does know, perhaps." She was talking to herself, and her voice was pathetic.
Philip's eyes grew fierce with anger. "What do you mean?"
"Not what your very ideal mind thinks," she said coldly.
He flamed scarlet, and looked away. "Claire," he said softly, "will you never have done stirring up suspicions no man could avoid, and then condemning them?"
"I didn't stir them up," she mocked.
"Who did, then?"
Claire was undergoing a developing reconstruction, but that she did not know. She thought she was degenerating, and the immediate result was to make her careless and ironical.
"Oh, the devil, perhaps," she hazarded.
"What are you, Claire?" Philip demanded hoarsely.
Suddenly her suffering broke into tears. To his utter amazement, she began to cry unrestrainedly.
Over and over she sobbed: "I don't know, I don't know."
For a moment Philip stood motionless, bewildered, then his love and natural tenderness swept over him, and he said tenderly, "Don't, Claire, please."
She only cried harder, weakened the more by his pity. He took her in his arms as he would a child, and comforted her. She was tempted to struggle, but her need for sympathy prevailed, and she did not resist him. He held her in his arms, pouring out his love, his anxiety, his tenderness, and in her momentary condition she listened and made no protest. In her aching mind she kept repeating, "I have killed Lawrence's love with my bestial talk"—and she wanted love. She did not think of her husband. He was too far away. In her present attitude she exalted Lawrenceto the unattainable, and, without formulating the thought, she was willing to lie in Philip's arms and take what he could give. They were two of a kind, she thought scornfully. In her bitterness, the bleak, snow-covered land, with its drooping pines, seemed in its cold monotony a fitting background for two such worthless derelicts.
In the Spaniard's mind was but one thought—to comfort Claire and restore her to her usual self. Vaguely he knew that love was already promised by the unresisting body in his arms, but there was no thought of immediately pressing his suit. He petted and talked until she stopped crying, then he stood her on her feet, and said, with a tender laughter in his words: "There, you are all right again. We would better go in. You are cold."
Silently she walked beside him back to the cabin. She was indifferent, she thought, as to whether he did or did not continue his appeals for love. She was under her own deep, unexplained, emotional control which led her forward. She was finding herself, but before she would be safe she would have to throw off a mass of traditional views, beliefs, and teachings. If Philip chose to press his suit while her knowledge of herself still seemed vile and abnormal, she would be surely his. Claire thought herself lost. She had revealed her terrible state to Lawrence, killed his love, filled him with abhorrence, and struck at his life's source.
With silent turmoil in her brain she entered the cabin beside Philip. When she saw Lawrence, a sharp pain went through her. He was white as death save for the red spots that marked his fever. She took off her coat and snow-cap hurriedly.
"Lawrence," she said softly, going toward him.
He lifted his head slightly.
"What is it, Claire?"
"I want to do something for you. You're ill."
His face clouded. "No, thanks," he said. "You've done too much for me already."
"Won't you do anything for yourself?" she begged.
"I'll be all right. It's just a cold, I guess."
Philip came and stood looking down at Lawrence scrutinizingly, while Claire went to the fire and heated water.
"I am going to fill you up with quinin," he announced. "It is never missing from my medicine-chest."
"All right," Lawrence laughed. "It isn't bitter compared to what I'm filling myself with."
"Are you not making a fool of yourself?" Philip asked plainly.
"Yes. I know it. That doesn't keep me from doing it, though."
Claire turned and looked at them, her eyes sternly reproachful toward Philip.
"One can't help thinking," she said. "I can't."
"I shouldn't want you to," Lawrence returned. "Indeed, I'm grateful to you for making me think, too."
"She started you off, did she?" Philip smiled.
Lawrence did not answer, and Philip sat down by the fire where he could watch Claire as she worked.
After a time Lawrence said thoughtfully: "If one could establish some sort of a relation between himself and the ultimate first cause of all this blind snowstorm we call life, things might get shaped with some measure for perspectives."
"Yes," Philip assented. "I manage to establish one, though I confess it isn't clearly logical."
"What is it?" Lawrence asked.
"Simply having faith; hope, if you prefer it."
"But faith in what, and what do you base it on?"
"Oh, on my experience."
"I wonder if we really matter at all to the rest of the scheme," Claire voiced.
"I am inclined to think not," replied Lawrence. "We matter only to ourselves, and what we can do with the universe around us."
"We matter to God, I think," said Philip. "I don't mean in the old accepted sense; but we must matter to Him in some way, perhaps as your statue here matters to you."
Lawrence chuckled weakly. "It mattered tremendously when I was doing it.Now it doesn't in the least matter. I shouldn't care if you burned it as firewood."
"But you must care," Claire protested, feeling that he was losing interest in his work because of her.
"I don't see why. I haven't any real assurance as to its value. It may be good, more likely it isn't; in any case, I have turned it loose to shift for itself. It can survive or not; its doing so is immaterial. Perhaps as immaterial as my existence is to the Great Artist who conceived the botched job called me."
"But, Lawrence, why insist that you don't matter to Him?"
"Oh, because I am scarcely aware of Him at all; indeed, I am not aware of Him, and I am sure He isn't aware of me."
"You have not any way to prove that," declared Philip.
"True, except that I can imaginatively comprehend the size of time and space, and all that is therein. I know my own size, and I can readily imagine that the creator of the whole is no more aware of me than I am, say, of a small worm that may be in the heart of my cherub there."
"We do seem pretty small in the face of the stars," said Claire.
"Yes, and so impossible," added Lawrence. "I didn't realize until to-day how utterly impossible I really am."
"But, impossible or not, here you are," Philip laughed.
"Yes, here I am and there I may be, but in either place I am not especially possible. You are; you can go out and make a definite, independent impression on life; that makes you possible in that you are forcing recognition of power and capability. I can't do that. The impression I make is one of incapability. For myself I am impossible, and for others more so."
"Which has nothing to do with God," said Philip, in his tone a touch of distaste.
Lawrence recognized it and became silent.
Claire made him take the quinin and heated bricks for his feet. Philip went out to cut wood for the fire, leaving her alone with the sick man. She was so full of her own wickedness, as she conceived it, that she dared not tell him her thoughts. She wanted to explain that she loved him, that she had loved him all along, but she could not. She looked at him, and felt sure that he had now no love for her.
Lawrence was trying to follow out in his mind a searching inquiry as to his relation to life. "If I could only establish that," he thought, "I could get myself straight and there would be something to start from. If I knew which way to move!" But he was unable to do any coherent thinking. His head ached, his lips burned with fever, and his body kept him busy with the sensation of pain. It seemed to him that illness made his state more detestable, but it also offered him a chance of escape from the whole drab business. He was quite sure that he wanted to escape, and he would not have believed it if any one had told him that he would resist death to the uttermost; yet deep within him was that will to live which had made him the creative artist. It was working, unknown to him, now, toward the reconstruction he so needed.
He turned restlessly, and muttered something about his foolishness. Claire came and sat beside him silently. She was wondering what would happen if she should tell him of her discovery of herself.
"Claire!" Lawrence spoke. "Is it possible for any one to get his life platform built so that it will stand without that first great plank?"
"What plank?"
"God."
"I don't know."
"It seems to me that you couldn't have shaken me so yesterday if I had been built up right."
"Lawrence," she said piteously, "I didn't mean to do that, to say that."
He waved her words aside. "Never mind, Claire, it did me good. I was not realizing, quite, just what I was. I'm finding it out, and when I get right I'll be all the better for it."
"But you don't know why I did it."
"Yes, I do, but it doesn't matter, anyway. What was behind your words doesn't count so long as you told the truth."
"But it does count, and I didn't tell the truth."
"I'm afraid you did. Please don't try to cover it with kind fibs now."
"I sha'n't, but you don't understand."
"Well, Claire, it doesn't matter, as I said. What is it to me what you do or don't do, so long as you bring me face to face with more truth?"
She thought he was telling her that he cared nothing for her. She did not blame him, yet there was a tiny streak of pride that said, "At least Philip finds me worth while."
"It is simply my own salvation that is involved," Lawrence went on.
"Well, I hope you find it," she said simply.
"I must find it to live," he answered.
"And how do you propose to find it?"
"I don't know. I wish I did."
"You might find it, as you once said, in creative work."
"No, that isn't a salvation. I must have a platform from which to work. Don't you see that, Claire?"
"I don't understand anything about it."
"Pardon me, I didn't intend to force this upon you."
"That isn't what I mean, Lawrence." Her eyes were moist. "What I meant was that you live above me entirely."
"Nonsense," he said wrathfully. "You talk like a silly girl, Claire."
"Do I? Well, I am perhaps less worth while than you think."
"Oh, I guess not," he returned carelessly.
She covered her face with her hands.
"I know you are worth all that I think you are," he continued. "But I am afraid that just now I am too interested in my own salvation to think of you at all correctly."
"Yes," she observed wearily.
She was thinking of Philip as he had comforted her that morning, and his tenderness, compared to this cold statement from Lawrence, seemed attractive beyond measure. She admitted that all hope of Lawrence's loving her was dead, and she said to herself: "It is what I wanted. I can go back to my husband." But she did not want to go back to Howard. She received this discovery calmly. She would never go back. But why shouldn't she? She could not tell for certain. She thought it was because she had found herself unworthy, but deep within her was the knowledge that she no longer loved him. It would be useless to go back to him in any event. He could never be the same to her after hearing of her long months with this blind man in the wilderness.
What months they had been! She thought them over, day by day, and she saw what might have been a great joy sink, after a glimpse, into utter darkness. Before her she saw the endless gray years beside Philip. Yes, she would stay with him. At least he loved her, and she could help him. If she did not love him, what of it? She would be an able wife to him. She could keep him from ever knowing that her heart was away with Lawrence, who would be back in the world at home and have forgotten her.
"Claire!" Lawrence was speaking. "We have certainly reaped a strange harvest from our months of sowing in the wilderness."
"Yes."
"Whatever brought it about?"
"I don't know."
"Perhaps it was fate, that you should teach me where I stand in life."
"Perhaps."
"And perhaps you, too, will find that I have been of some value when we are separated."
"It may be."
"I wish things might have gone differently."
"They didn't."
"No, and they can't. Well, let them be as they are."
"I guess we'll have to, Lawrence."
A few minutes later, when she looked at him, he was asleep.