Part 14 (2/2)

She should know it. He would show her such carving as she had never thought possible. After all, was her love to him, Lawrence the artist, the capable, blindness-conquering artist? ”I am reconstructing my life,”

he thought, ”so that I can still find it valuable without the woman I want.” He again laughed bitterly and said to himself, ”You poor, blind, groveling beast, you, what a poor excuse for life you have, and what a tawdry subst.i.tute you would offer Claire for the vast joy that is hers!

Oh, it is contemptible!”

He bent over his work again, and the door opened.

Claire came across the room and leaned over him, her body radiating a cool, healthy perfume as she laid her hand on his shoulder.

”Oh, what a splendid piece of work, Lawrence!”

Her voice was joyous, triumphant, and his heart beat desperately against his chest. ”They've declared their love,” he thought, and then he said simply, his voice vibrant with the emotion he did not otherwise show, ”It's been beastly lonesome to-day, Claire.”

She laughed gaily, while her eyes clouded. Then she noticed the untouched food on the table.

”Why, Lawrence, didn't you like the lunch I fixed for you?”

”It was bully, Claire,” he answered quickly, ”but I wasn't very hungry to-day--I don't know why.”

The emotional coloring in his voice set her whole being atremble. She had come in, radiant with the day's pleasure, and he had met her with his need. He had been too blue even to eat. She was suddenly seized with pity for him, as she thought of his long day alone. But more than that, over and over in her heart she kept saying, with a joy she could not conceal from herself, ”He loves me! He loves me!”

Philip came in and bent over them both to look at the wooden child.

”_Caramba!_ it is a marvelous thing!” he exclaimed. The unconscious use of the Spanish word showed the genuineness of his admiration.

Claire laughed joyously. She was glad that Philip knew the power of this blind man who loved her, and a vague feeling came over her that she was now somehow safe from Philip. Instantly she wondered at her feeling the need of safety from him. Glancing back over Lawrence's head, she met Ortez's eyes and read in their look a tenderness that he did not know was there. Her heart leaped unsteadily, and her lashes dropped. She was saying to herself, ”How wonderful he is!”

Then she turned and almost ran behind the curtain that walled her room.

On the edge of her bed she sat, her face in her hands, hot tears burning her eyes, while over and over the blood rushed into her cheeks and out again.

”Claire! Claire! What sort of a woman are you?” she moaned.

Her heart beat irregularly under the surge of emotion that shook her.

She was glad, glad that Lawrence loved her. She had looked into the eyes of Philip Ortez, and her own had dropped, while her mind had leaped into admiration of him, warm, yielding admiration. What was it that had swept her on the discovery of one man's love to a deep, vibrant gladness--that another man's eyes had been filled with tenderness for her? Was she so changed from the Claire of old? Was she utterly degraded? Did she want both men to love her? Did she love either of them? What of her husband?

She sank down on the bed and wept silently.

They were talking out there in the cabin. She heard Lawrence say laughingly: ”One gets accustomed to hearing your voices around, and to hearing Claire do things, so that a day alone seems endless.”

”Hearing Claire do things”--that was it--and suppose he knew what she was, would he want to hear her then?

”Oh, I know,” Philip was answering. ”It gets to be a sort of necessity, doesn't it, when we have so many a.s.sociations and memories all among ourselves? I shall find the place dreary next winter, I am afraid, when you are back among your friends, and Claire”--he paused slightly--”will be going about as ever, doing things for her husband somewhere up there in the States.”

Would her husband ever imagine or discover what she was? If he did, he would leave her. She remembered a girl in the slums at home who had refused to be uplifted. ”Aw, one fellow ain't enough. A plain ham is all right for some, but I want a club-sandwich.” She shuddered now at the memory of the girl's words, and shrank together on her bed. Was she another of that sort, abnormal, degenerate, whose life must find its level at last in the sordid riot of promiscuity, disguising itself as love? If Claire had never touched the bed-rock of self-abas.e.m.e.nt before, she was doing it now, there in that cabin.

She heard Ortez starting to get supper, and she sat up quickly. With stern control she forced herself to seem composed and quiet, while within her pa.s.sions raged like a tornado. Self-contempt, wonder, amazement, pity for her husband, for Lawrence, and hatred for Philip Ortez swept round and round in her brain like a maelstrom.

She stepped through her curtain and said gaily: ”You're preempting my privilege, Philip.”

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