t does," he agreed, earnestly. "But your lips were cold to my
kiss." He bent over to test the truth of his remark.

"Do you forget Lawrence so easily?" Claire raised a hand over her face.
"Certainly I cannot."

"I beg your pardon," Philip said, rising hastily. "Of course he is to
be remembered. We will wait until we are alone to talk of our future."

"Yes," she said. "I should prefer that greatly."

He touched his lips to her forehead tenderly, then stepped silently into
the room beyond.

She heard him as he moved quietly to replenish the fire, and it seemed
to her that he made enough noise to echo from the mountains across the
lake. She must think her situation through. She was studying the look
she had read on Philip's face, and was angry with herself, yet she could
not help thinking of it and its meaning. Suddenly she remembered the
same expression on her husband's face, and she shuddered. She had
thought it beautiful then, why not now? And why should she be so
contemptuous when probably the same look had been in her own eyes when
she had raged at Lawrence because he had not taken her in his arms.
Philip was sitting out there beyond the curtain dreaming ecstatically of
the days when they would be alone in the cabin, and she smiled
ironically. After all, there was but one way out. He would find little
comfort in her ghost, and her drowned body would scarcely fire him to
passion.

She rose and slipped out into the room. Lawrence was still asleep. She
did not even glance toward Philip because she foresaw his look of
proprietorship. She went straight to Lawrence, and bending over him as
if to arrange something about his blanket, she whispered softly:
"Beloved, when I am alone with him, I shall be more with you."

Philip came and stood beside her, his hand resting lightly on her
shoulder.

"It looks like a serious fever," he said softly.

Claire listened to Lawrence's breathing and felt his temperature. She
stood up, gray with anxiety. "I'm afraid for him," she said, and there
was that in her voice which Philip did not understand.

They ate their supper in silence. Claire glanced at Philip occasionally
and found in his eyes the anticipated look of tender ownership. She let
him slip out of her mind while she thought again of the afternoon when
Lawrence had declared his creative principle. How dearly she would love
to help him, to have him model his statue of her. He had said that she
was savage and elemental un