Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author

by Leslie Burton Blades

There was to come a time, later, when experience would have taught him that there is a wild strain in the nature of human hearts which abuses out of a desire to be conquered. He did not yet realize that he had spoken truly when he said that this woman had hidden in her the savage warring sexed tumult of all the struggling ages.

She saw him there, his hand up, and suddenly her emotion changed. It was love, still love crying out for expression, but now she was all compassion, tenderness, and fear. She read in his face what she had done, and her heart was gray with the pain at her own failure.

Now all love for her was buried, perhaps dead, under his shattered selfhood, slain in the wrecking earthquake that she had brought to pass with the ardor of her passion. She had meant to sting him into taking her in his arms and forcing her to love him, and instead—"Oh, God!" she whispered, and slipped behind the curtain to throw herself on her bed and weep with heart wrung by self-condemnation and loving pity for the man whom she had clubbed with his own dread weakness. She had shattered into chaos the strong soul of the man she loved, with the only weapon he would have felt, and she realized now that it was her love, her desire to be his, to be his utterly, that had led her to do it.

Lawrence was too hurt to move. His mind repeated again and again the words she had spoken. He kept saying to himself: "Blindness has made me that, an egotist beggar." He did not reproach Claire. She had swept him too far from his habitual moorings for that. There was no rebellion against her, none, indeed, against life. Over him rolled wave after wave of self-contempt, distrust, and anguish that shook him with an agony that only the assured man knows when the one he loves most of all on earth strikes dead his faith in himself. He thought of a multitude of things that stabbed anew, but not once did he move in the interminable period that passed before Philip returned.

When he did come, the Spaniard was amazed at the crouching, white-faced man whom he found before a dying fire. There was something so sad in the blind face that Philip felt no suspicion and no anger. He looked for Claire, but she was not visible. He stirred the fire and set about preparing supper while his mind began digging at the problem which he saw in the attitude of the man there in the chair. Claire did not come out to help. She was too exhausted from the storm that had swept over her. In her bed she could hardly smother the scream that kept rising to her lips. She wanted to spring up and cry aloud to Lawrence for forgiveness. She was scarcely aware of Philip as he moved about.

She could have thrown herself at Lawrence's feet and pleaded with him. She was discovering that her whole wild outbreak was a strange expression of her physical desire for this man whom she loved, and the discovery made her as self-detesting as she had been violent in her outbreak. It seemed to her that there was nothing, nothing she would not do to make amends to Lawrence for what she had said. She wanted to tell him what it had been that prompted her, but she dared not lest in revulsion at her viciousness he turn on her and kill her.

"God, God," she muttered, "what have I done!"

Philip was calling her to supper. She steadied her voice, and said humbly: "I can't come out. I'm not feeling very well. Go on without me, please."

She heard him speak to Lawrence, and she strained her ears to catch the answering movement toward the table, but there was none. At last Philip spoke again in a voice that was full of anxiety: "Lawrence, what in God's name has happened?"

Lawrence was moving now, and she waited with bated breath for his answer. He walked to the table and sat down. His voice was heavy. "I've found myself out, Philip. That's all. I know what I am."