They laughed with the joy that was filling their hearts.

"Don't be longer than you can help, Philip," Claire admonished, and
Lawrence added: "Every minute that divides us from our life ahead seems
an eternity."

Claire smiled at the dear thoughts his words provoked.

"Good," said Philip in the doorway. "I'll hurry." And he was gone.

Claire and Lawrence stood in the doorway while Philip went singing down
the lake shore. Her eyes filled with a warm light, and she slipped her
hand into Lawrence's.

"At this moment, dear," she said, "I feel only pity for him. He is going
to be hurt."

"Who wouldn't be, dearest, at losing you?"

"Always flattering," she teased. They stood arm in arm, leaning against
the door-casing.

"Claire," he said, "let's take a last walk around our estate. The place
where I first found the real, you will always be beautiful to me. I'm
less blind this morning than I've been in my life."

"Of course you are," she said gaily. "You've acquired two good eyes."

"And two dear hands and a very wonderful personality that makes me
doubly able," he said softly.

They wandered out across the plateau in the direction from which they
had first entered it. Their conversation was broken and often
meaningless, but eminently pleasing to them both.

"Dear heart," Claire mused softly, "you don't know what that poor,
freezing, underfed woman in your naked arms felt when she heard you
muttering that you needed her, as you stumbled down this ravine."

"How did she feel?"

Claire was dreaming back, and she wanted to tell him, but she found her
emotions too complex and too rapid for expression.

"And then when you added that it was to use her as a subject for a stone
image," laughed Claire, "she was furious with you, and yet she was very
sure that she didn't want you to care about her in any other way."

"Then perhaps I am making a mistake," he jested.

"Perhaps, my dearest, but I am so glad of it that I don't care if you
are."

He caught her in his arms. They were very near the great point in
lovers' lives when emotions always tend to break all restraint. She
clung to him passionately, her lips yielding and holding his in a
rapture of love. Together they swayed toward a great tree and sat down.

When they returned to the cabin, they were surprised to find Philip
still gone. With the whimsicality of lovers, they dismissed him from
their thoughts and sat down in the armchair together, laughing and
t