"Hello, Mr. Dreamer! Still in the land of to-morrow?" she called, taking off her heavy wraps.
"Where's Philip?" Lawrence demanded gruffly, without moving.
"Working over a trap in the ravine. I was a little tired, so I didn't wait."
Lawrence could hear her brushing her hair. He was glad she had returned without Philip. Now at least they would have a few minutes alone.
"Snow bad?" he asked. If he could only have run his hands through that curly mass! The memory of her hair brushing against his face made his temples throb dully.
"Yes, my hair is filled with it. I caught my cap on a branch, and the whole load of snow came down on top of me."
"How old are you, Claire?" he demanded suddenly.
She laughed. "Guess! Don't you know it isn't good form to ask a lady her age?"
"Sometimes you are quite thirty, and other times--"
"Well, go on." Claire was standing at the opposite side of the fireplace with her back to the flame.
"Other times, you are two," Lawrence continued calmly.
"I thought that was coming. Well, just to prove what a really nice person I am, I'll tell you. I'm twenty-six."
"When were you married, Claire?" Her breath tightened at his question.
"Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and the impudence of man passeth all understanding. I have been married exactly six years, three months, and twenty-four days." The last sentence brought the catch into her voice that Lawrence had expected.
"I know you miss your husband," he forced himself to say formally.
"Yes, you see"--Claire hesitated--"ours wasn't like some marriages one hears about. Howard and I were both very much in love." She realized too late the past tense. Had Lawrence noticed it? "I miss him dreadfully," she added desperately.
Lawrence said nothing. He had noticed Claire's slip, and the verb had sent him into a thousand realized dreams. The next instant he was cursing himself for a fool. "Fools, all of us," he thought. "Philip, too, warming himself with dreams of Claire." Before the nearness of the Spaniard's personality, Howard Barkley faded into the background. Lawrence reviewed his own position moodily.
Blind, unable to do the work that Philip did, certainly unable to use the million little ways of courtesy-building as Philip did, his chances were unequal.