Claire Part 22

"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.

CHAPTER XIII.

FAINT HEART AND FAIR LADY.

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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 one continual 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."