s days for play."

"Good!" Lawrence answered. "We'll go out, then, and play."

A rush of self-pity, anger against her situation, fear of she knew not
what, and a gnawing desire to escape blended in her thoughts, while her
heart warmed at the sound of Lawrence's words.

"Oh," she thought, "I can never, never stand this day!"

She got out of bed and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the
buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings,
stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking
again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped
into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to
her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but this
morning she flushed with sudden anger that a chair should have been left
in his way. Then she realized that she was foolish, stepped through the
curtain, and said before she thought:

"Lawrence, I do wish that you'd look where you are going!"

He laughed merrily. "So do I," he rejoined. "For some years failure to
do so has kept me with at least one skinned shin. But just think of the
cost of stockings had I been blind as a boy!"

Suddenly she had a vivid picture of him as a ragged, little fellow,
stumbling about through his unfathomable darkness, bumping into things
and leaving jagged holes in his child's black stockings. Whether she
wanted to laugh or cry she did not know, but a great, warm surge of
motherliness came over her for the child she imaged, and she said aloud,
"Poor little urchin!"

Philip turned and looked at her, smiling. "It would have been a picture
indeed," he said.

"I had enough troubles during my rebellious childhood at the orphanage
without adding imaginary woes," Lawrence went on, amusedly
retrospective. "I remember one day when I was at the awkward stage. I
was all dressed for church and happened to stumble over another boy
lying in the grass. I fell against a bench, my trousers caught on a
projecting nail, and ripped dreadfully. The matron gave me a scolding
and sent me to bed for the day."

"Brought up in an orphanage!" thought Claire. "No wonder he is
pessimistic."

"I didn't mind missing church," Lawrence continued; "but it struck me as
a piece of gross injustice that I should be punished for a boy's lack of
muscular coordination. I've experienced the same fate over my blindness.
It seems to be a special trick people have, and they play it
incessa