Claire Part 10

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 a.s.sured 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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Claire

by Leslie Burton Blades

THE BLIND LOVE OF A BLIND HERO

_BY A BLIND AUTHOR_

This story began in the All-Story Weekly for October 5.

CHAPTER VII.

PLAYING WITH FIRE.

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 part.i.tion, 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 must take 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 G.o.d?"

"You may as well, though it isn't especially clear." Lawrence smiled.

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d who speaks in solitude." He drew down a volume, and returned to his chair.