Part 12 (2/2)

”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 pa.s.seth 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 s.e.x-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 pa.s.sion 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.

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