Part 24 (2/2)

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-abas.e.m.e.nt. 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 companions.h.i.+p. 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, G.o.d, 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--”

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