t in its place.

"Hello, Claire. Back, are you?" His voice held the impersonal, sullen
note that he used of late. "Where is Philip?"

"Why, didn't he find you?"

Lawrence was immediately angry. He thought, "Why should Philip be
hunting for me? I don't need his care. Can't I even go out without a
guardian?"

"I didn't see him," he returned, aloud.

"I sent him to find you." She was standing looking at him, her whole
figure expressing love and relief at his return.

He was too angry to catch the fine warmth of her voice, and his
inability to see handicapped him more at that moment than at any time in
his life.

"I sent him to find you," she said again.

"He didn't. I came back as I went, alone."

"Lawrence, what is the matter with you?" she asked, pleadingly, with
tears in her voice.

He felt the emotion in her words, and was suddenly contrite. If he had
known it, he was acting like the sentimentalists whom he ridiculed, but
he suffered from the egotist's fate, he did not recognize his own
failing.

"I don't know that there is anything the matter, Claire. It angered me
to think that you still imagine that because I am blind I need a
guardian," he said, dropping into a chair.

She came over toward him, impulsively.

"That isn't the idea at all," she said, still very worried. "It was
simply that you told me yourself that you were helpless in the snow."

"I didn't ask to be cared for," he snapped.

"I wasn't caring for you--nor about you," she retorted, in sudden
irritation. "I didn't want you to be lost, that's all."

"I should think you'd be glad to see me gone." He was a little ashamed
of his own words, but he did not try to remedy the speech.

"What do you mean?"

He smiled ironically. "Even a blind man sometimes sees too much of
lovers."

Claire sank into a chair and struggled against the starting sobs. It
seemed to her that her whole life was becoming one continual argument
wherein she was accused and in return forced to demand explanations.

"What in the world do you mean?" she faltered. "Are you saying that
Philip and I are lovers?"

"Aren't you?"

"Of course not! It isn't like you to say that. And what if we were?"

"It wouldn't be any of my business, would it?" He was bitter.

"I suppose not," she said, weakly.

"You needn't be hesitant about admitting it. It's true," he went on.
"Why shouldn't it be? I am a mere piece of excess baggage which you are
too kind-hearted to eliminate.