himself against the death now so surely at
hand. In his mind thought had ceased to be coherent; his starved body,
whipped by the cold, was beginning to play with the imagery.

He gurgled a grim little laugh, and all clear thought was at an end.
Claire heard and looked at him wonderingly. She knew that she was
freezing, and she had resigned herself, but this man, what was he doing?
He still lunged through the trees, where, at all events it seemed a
little warmer. She heard him muttering incoherent jargon that gradually
cleared to speech. "We'll go on, Claire. We'll go on to the end. I've
got to do it. I need my life. I need you!"

She started and listened, though even in her present state she grew
resentful. "So that was it," she thought; "he's waiting to get me out
before he breaks into his love. He wants his rescue as an argument."
Then her thinking was broken into detached images. She saw her husband
and cried aloud to him. She had pictures flashing in her mind of him, of
old scenes, parties, places they had been together, tenements she had
visited in her charity work, the beach that morning when Lawrence had
found her, and in and through it all she heard words falling from his
lips that recalled later, stung her to wrath.

"I need you, Claire," she heard him again, and then, "I shall use you,
Claire. You will be my masterpiece. It is you, proud, superior, human,
social, intellectual, sexed, vital, you, carrying in your being the
whole tumultuous riot of the ages gone, and hiding it under a guarded
social exterior, not knowing when in a sentence it breaks through, you,
you, Claire, you, the woman!"

He stumbled, regained his balance, and plunged through a fringe of
pines, staggered against one, then another, cursed, and went again
forward and out into a clearing. She saw it vaguely before them. At
first she doubted, then, as he let his hold on her slip, she gripped his
neck with arms that scarcely felt the body they closed around.

"Lawrence," she screamed in a voice that was shrill--"Lawrence, a cabin,
a cabin!"

He sank down with her clinging to him still. "I know," he muttered,
"I've got to find one." Then he lay quiet.

She freed herself and crept toward the house. She was at the back of it,
and she was obliged to crawl slowly on hands and knees around to the
front. There was a door, she pushed on it, but it did not open. She grew
angry at it, and beat against it with her fists, abusing it for its
obstinac