“All right, then, let’s go on the quest together!” Northrup stood up and offered his hand to Mary-Clare as if actually they were to start on the pilgrimage. “Where and when may I begin to read to you?”
The children were coming nearer.
“While this weather lasts, I’d love the open. Wouldn’t you? Logs, like this, are such perfect places.”
“I thought perhaps”––Northrup looked what he dared not voice––“I thought perhaps in that cabin of yours we might be more comfortable, more undisturbed.”
Mary-Clare smiled and shook her head.
“No, I think it would be impossible. That cabin is too full––well, I’m sure I could not listen as I should, to you, in that cabin.”
And so it was that the book became the medium of expression to Northrup and Mary-Clare. It justified that which might otherwise have been impossible. It drugged them both to any sense of actual danger. It was like a shield behind which they might advance and retreat unseen and unharmed. And if the shield ever fell for an unguarded moment, Northrup believed that he alone was vouchsafed clear vision.
He grew to marvel at the simplicity and purity of Mary-Clare’s point of view. He knew that she must have gone through some gross experiences with a man like Rivers, but they had left her singularly untouched.
But, while Northrup, believing himself shielded from the woman near him, permitted his imagination full play, Mary-Clare drew her own conclusions. She accepted Northrup without question as far as he personally was concerned. He was making her life rich and full, but he would soon pass; become a memory to brighten the cold, dark years ahead, just as the memory of the old doctor had done: would always do.
Desperately Mary-Clare clung to this thought, and reinforced by it referred constantly to her own position as if to convince Northrup of perfect understanding of their relations.