n and jealousy of Philip,
grew daily more dissatisfied. He would hear the intimate ring in their
voices and writhe within. The artist felt keenly that he was being set
aside, and his eager determination to live and be in the front rank of
warring manhood made him determine to win Claire against this man who,
it seemed to him, was taking her from him by mere advantage of sight. He
felt that they were shelving him as a blind man, a very nice fellow, but
quite outside the possibility of any relation with their real lives. He
now thought that Claire was kind to him as one is to those whose
situation makes them objects of pity.

There were days when he sat alone before the fire in the cabin brooding
until he was filled with savage hatred of Philip. He would think of all
sorts of impossible means of eliminating this Spaniard from Claire's
life; then Philip would come in, talk to him, seem so very normally
friendly as man to man, that his reason mastered his fancies and he
laughed at himself. He ridiculed his own thoughts with an irony that
inwardly grew in bitterness with his growing love for Claire, and he
would end by admitting that Philip was only doing what he himself would
like to do.

In his fair-minded moments he did not blame his friend. "I should be a
fool to expect him to act differently," he told himself. "In this
struggle for meat and mate which we all wage, he is doing what any one
would do. I who am losing must at least be just to him." He resolved to
be just, and in a little while was again ensnaring himself in his own
notions. "She is throwing herself away upon this Spaniard," he thought,
"while I sit by. If I were not blind, she would see that after all I am
the better man. I put all my power into the carving of that little
statue, and she knows it is good, better than anything he has done or
can do, and yet--she loves him."

He would rise and walk the floor in his tension, knocking into the
chairs recklessly. His thoughts would gain speed from his bodily
movement, and soon he would rage against the man whose guest he was,
against Claire, against life, fate, and blindness. Then suddenly his
ever self-questioning mind would demand of him, "Why are you doing
nothing, then?" He did nothing because he could do nothing. That was
his answer, no sooner made than contradicted, no sooner contradicted
than to be restated, "I do nothing because I will do nothing."

Several times he refused to go with them on tramps