To Philip, the child brought still other suggestions. Moved by his present feeling of great, chivalrous guardianship of the woman who had said she needed him, he felt that it was a symbol of the great sacrificial love which he was privileged to know, and at the same time he felt that it was a symbol of hope.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK. Don't forget this magazine is issued weekly, and that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.
This story began in the All-Story Weekly for October 5.
Between men and women who have established what they believe to be an unemotional friendship there nearly always springs up a relation franker than any which is otherwise possible. Such was the experience of Philip and Claire during the days that followed. They took many walks together, and their conversation grew daily more exclusive and more personal.
Lawrence, through ignorance of their situation 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."