aire?" Her breath tightened at his question.

"Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and the impudence of man passeth 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 sex-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 passion 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 sh