He carved viciously but accurately, while his mind and body yearned toward the hour when she would be in his arms, yielding, abandoned, loving.
Claire watched him from her place at the table in calmness of mind that, following her day of tumult, she could not understand. Peace, the peace that comes when one thinks he has settled something forever, was hers.
"Philip," she said, "our artist has buried himself in his work. Shall we go forth on a chance adventure?"
Lawrence choked back a whirl of jealous suspicion that swept to his lips, and said from his corner, "Do! I'll have a surprise for your return."
He wanted to say, "No, stay here, Claire. I wish to tell you something, to make you see that I love you, that this Philip is not for you, that he is outside our real lives," but his tongue refused to obey his will.
"It sounds inviting," said Philip, rising. "Suppose we do."
Lawrence worked savagely, his mind grasping at impossible thoughts which kept struggling for expression. He was afraid, afraid till it chilled him, lest, after all, she loved Philip. If her voice had sounded so intense that noon, it had been because she resented his holding her while her real lover looked on.
Meanwhile Claire and Philip tramped through the pines in silence. She was wondering why she had come. She hesitated before speaking to him as she had determined. Perhaps he would be hurt at her imagining he could think of making any advances to a married woman, he would feel that she had suspected and accused him of a thing of which he was incapable.
Speech was difficult, so she trudged along, feeling very uncomfortable. Her heart ached as she saw again the lonely look on Lawrence's face bending over his work back there in the cabin.
"The adventure is slow in coming," Philip said, genially.
"Perhaps we don't know how to find it," she answered, not heeding her words especially. "To find adventure, one must be awake to possibilities."
"True," he mused, looking at her. "So much depends on a man's experience, knowledge, and imagination."
"I suppose life itself may set us, even calmly walking here, in the heart of an adventure."
"Why," she stammered, "I didn't imagine it was true when I spoke."
"To him who has faith, the wildest dreams are always possibilities."