to make you see that I love you, that this Philip is not for you, that
he is outside our real lives," but his tongue refused to obey his will.

"It sounds inviting," said Philip, rising. "Suppose we do."

They were gone.

Lawrence worked savagely, his mind grasping at impossible thoughts which
kept struggling for expression. He was afraid, afraid till it chilled
him, lest, after all, she loved Philip. If her voice had sounded so
intense that noon, it had been because she resented his holding her
while her real lover looked on.

Meanwhile Claire and Philip tramped through the pines in silence. She
was wondering why she had come. She hesitated before speaking to him as
she had determined. Perhaps he would be hurt at her imagining he could
think of making any advances to a married woman, he would feel that she
had suspected and accused him of a thing of which he was incapable.

Speech was difficult, so she trudged along, feeling very uncomfortable.
Her heart ached as she saw again the lonely look on Lawrence's face
bending over his work back there in the cabin.

"The adventure is slow in coming," Philip said, genially.

"Perhaps we don't know how to find it," she answered, not heeding her
words especially. "To find adventure, one must be awake to
possibilities."

"True," he mused, looking at her. "So much depends on a man's
experience, knowledge, and imagination."

"I suppose life itself may set us, even calmly walking here, in the
heart of an adventure."

"I have no doubt it does," he said.

Claire looked at him in faint alarm.

"Why," she stammered, "I didn't imagine it was true when I spoke."

"To him who has faith, the wildest dreams are always possibilities."

"Do you believe that, Philip?"

"I have found it to be quite true. I often dreamed of good company here
in my wilderness and a charming woman about my cabin. It has happened."

"But even that has its very strong drawbacks, hasn't it?"

"What, for example?" He looked at her, earnestly.

"Oh," she hesitated, laughed, and said, "the rapidly depleted food
supply, your time for thought broken, and all the rest."

"One sometimes finds a relief from thought very agreeable."

She wanted to laugh at the force with which his words struck her. "I'm
sure that depends on the thought, as Lawrence would say," she answered,
smiling.

"It does. And there is nothing I would not give to escape from my
present thoughts." His voice was pitched low.

Her