Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author. Leslie Burton Blades

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 whims essentially worth while. I'll admit I find mine so. Perhaps you feel the same about yours. One scarcely knows where egotism and vanity meet or end in a woman." He smiled, for he meant that to provoke, and it did.

      Claire's voice was edged when she replied. "A very penetrating remark. With men generally, vanity seems to be a widely extended cloak to spread over all things in a woman that they cannot dispose of in any other way. If I find you dull, or if I am not struck with your ability, or if you do not seem to me sufficiently fascinating, I am possessed of feminine vanity."

      "Precisely. And why not? If I choose to regard myself as all those things which you deny, why shouldn't I find the fault in you rather than in myself?"

      "Because it may be in you," suggested Claire.

      "It may, but that doesn't alter the case. I quite agree that you are right, but none the less you are at fault, because I, Lawrence, am the most important of all things to me."

      She did not answer. The conversation seemed to her useless. She saw no reason for arguing the matter, and she half suspected that he was simply teasing her. Besides, she could not but feel that to sit here in his coat and discuss egotism was a trifle ridiculous. He was merely trying to establish a friendship in talk which she did not care to encourage. That was her conclusion.

      As he rose to gather more sticks, he asked: "Do you happen to see a rock that flattens to an edge?"

      Told where he might find one, he brought it and struck it hard against their boulder. It did not break. "It may do," he said thoughtfully, and began to grind it against the side of the other rock. He worked steadily and long, and the result was a fairly good edge, which was nicked and toothed, but still an edge. He laid it down with a sigh of contentment.

      "My first tool," he commented.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

MUTUAL DISLIKE.

       Table of Contents

      All day Lawrence worked, and when night came he had hollowed out a piece of log to a depth of some eighteen inches, leaving six inches of solid wood in the bottom. Both were very well pleased with the result. With the coming of darkness, he gathered more berries, and heated water in his log kettle. They were able to cook the mushrooms and to bind her ankle in moss soaked in hot water. The building of a shelter was discussed, but both decided to resume their journey on the following day, so they slept again in the heavy moss.

      In the morning, Claire was glad indeed of the hot water, for it warmed her, and her ankle felt much better. They decided to follow the little stream which would doubtless wind its way somehow around the present ridge back to the ocean. Accordingly, they kept down the ravine, which cut across the ridge in a southerly direction.

      For the whole of that day and the next they followed the stream, which grew to a small creek. At noon of the third day they dropped suddenly down a steep slope to find themselves at the juncture of their stream, with a river which flowed through a deep gorge out to the ocean. They determined to follow it up toward its head.

      "Somewhere inland must be a town," argued Claire. "At any rate, it's the only way we can go."

      After living for four days on berries, they were beginning to feel acutely the need of other food, but they discussed the problem at length without arriving at any feasible solution. Two days later fortune temporarily relieved their difficulty.

      They were following along the side of a steep ridge overlooking the river, when Claire suddenly stopped him and gave a cry of delight. Near them a small, furry animal, caught in a tangled mass of wirelike creepers, was struggling to free itself. He killed the creature with his stone-edged tool, and after barbecuing it on the end of a stick, they ate it ravenously. Each of them would have disliked the whole scene at any other time, but now neither thought anything of it until after they were satisfied.

      Leaning back against a rock, Lawrence stroked his chin, rapidly becoming invisible under a heavy beard. "I hadn't known I was so hungry for real food," he laughed.

      Brown as a gipsy, her hair filled with tiny green leaves, Claire looked at him, her eyes shining with the warm light of satisfied hunger. "We ate like two beasts," she remarked languidly, and laughed. "It was simply disgraceful."

      "I know," he began to muse, "it doesn't take long for the most polished man—not that I ever was that—to become a savage."

      "You look the part," she laughed. "I suppose I do, too. My hair is matted hopelessly; the curliness makes it worse. My face, too, is rapidly hardening under this sun. If only I had a few more clothes—" She stopped and looked at him. "I feel the need of them," she finished lamely.

      Claire had worn his coat continuously from the first night, and his undershirt was tearing from contact with bush and tree. He grinned contentedly, however.

      "If you approach nakedness as rapidly as I," he chuckled, "I fear we both will have to avoid civilization. Undisguised humanity isn't tolerated there."

      She flushed warmly, then laughed.

      "I wonder why people are so afraid of being seen," Lawrence went on. "Of course, there's the warmth and natural protection of clothing, but one would feel so much freer without the encumbrance of shirt-stud and feathered plume."

      "We need them to complete a personality," said Claire. "I know few people who would inspire respect in their elemental state. Stripped of advertising silk and diamond, they wouldn't be so suggestive of wealth."

      "But why be so eager to impress others with your power?"

      She turned toward him with a faint smile. "If you didn't ask that as mere conversation, I would think you childish. You know very well why. It probably goes back to the days when the possession of a fish-hook, more or less, meant surer life. It has come to mean, now, that the decoration of an extra feather or white flannel trousers means advantageous position, the place of more power, more pleasure; in short, greater fulness of living."

      "But we are living fully, goodness knows," he interrupted. "This last week we have had to exert our wits and bodies in more ways than we ever did before in all our lives. True, I do miss my modeling somewhat." He spoke the last with a soft mellowness in his voice and a wistfulness СКАЧАТЬ