pause. "Of course, I don't especially remember that
I counted on heaven. It always seemed a bit distant in the face of
living and working. Perhaps, however, you counted it as vital."

"I was fairly occupied with more immediate things," she answered.
"However, that is a different world from this. What we did then can't
especially matter to us here. This is our place of business, so to
speak, and social life doesn't factor."

"I see." He accepted the snub thoughtfully. "But this business of ours
will grow exceedingly irksome without talk. I doubt if we can find the
means of escape an all-sufficient topic."

"We haven't boiled our water yet," she said. "And the bird is still free
to roam."

He did not carry on his line of thought aloud. If she had known what was
going on in his mind, she might have been angered. He was wondering just
how much thinking she was capable of. Certain that she was beautiful, he
had scarcely allowed that to occupy him. His experience had led him to
estimate people almost wholly by their ability to be open-minded. In his
struggle against blindness, he had concluded that open minds were rare
indeed, and persons who limited his freedom of action or tended to baby
him he had grown to dismiss with a shrug. Claire did not belong to that
class. "She has shown remarkable willingness to let me go my own pace,"
he thought, "but is this due to her mind or to mere indifference?" He
decided at last that the relationship would be tiresome for both of
them, and that she was not especially eager to prevent it from being so.
This conclusion led him to adopt a definite attitude toward her. She
could do as she pleased; he, for his part, would treat her simply as an
uninteresting person, a machine that furnished the eyes which he could
use in his travel to liberty.

He recalled how, when he had been displeased with convention, he had
thought of life in the wild as the best possible means of liberty, and
he laughed.

Claire looked up. "What is there amusing just now?"

"Myself, and you."

"Why, pray, am I amusing?" Then she was sorry she had said it.

"Because you are you."

"And are you other than yourself?" she asked scornfully.

"Not at all, but my own particular interests seem infinitely more
important to me than there is any possibility of yours doing."

"You mean to say that you are an egotist."

"Frankly, I am," he agreed. "One is an egotist, I suppose, when he finds
himself and his needs and w