strong soul of the man she loved, with the only weapon he
would have felt, and she realized now that it was her love, her desire
to be his, to be his utterly, that had led her to do it.

Lawrence was too hurt to move. His mind repeated again and again the
words she had spoken. He kept saying to himself: "Blindness has made me
that, an egotist beggar." He did not reproach Claire. She had swept him
too far from his habitual moorings for that. There was no rebellion
against her, none, indeed, against life. Over him rolled wave after wave
of self-contempt, distrust, and anguish that shook him with an agony
that only the assured man knows when the one he loves most of all on
earth strikes dead his faith in himself. He thought of a multitude of
things that stabbed anew, but not once did he move in the interminable
period that passed before Philip returned.

When he did come, the Spaniard was amazed at the crouching, white-faced
man whom he found before a dying fire. There was something so sad in the
blind face that Philip felt no suspicion and no anger. He looked for
Claire, but she was not visible. He stirred the fire and set about
preparing supper while his mind began digging at the problem which he
saw in the attitude of the man there in the chair. Claire did not come
out to help. She was too exhausted from the storm that had swept over
her. In her bed she could hardly smother the scream that kept rising to
her lips. She wanted to spring up and cry aloud to Lawrence for
forgiveness. She was scarcely aware of Philip as he moved about.

She could have thrown herself at Lawrence's feet and pleaded with him.
She was discovering that her whole wild outbreak was a strange
expression of her physical desire for this man whom she loved, and the
discovery made her as self-detesting as she had been violent in her
outbreak. It seemed to her that there was nothing, nothing she would not
do to make amends to Lawrence for what she had said. She wanted to tell
him what it had been that prompted her, but she dared not lest in
revulsion at her viciousness he turn on her and kill her.

"God, God," she muttered, "what have I done!"

Philip was calling her to supper. She steadied her voice, and said
humbly: "I can't come out. I'm not feeling very well. Go on without me,
please."

She heard him speak to Lawrence, and she strained her ears to catch the
answering movement toward the table, but there was none. At last Philip
spoke again in