"True, except that I can imaginatively comprehend the size of time and space, and all that is therein. I know my own size, and I can readily imagine that the creator of the whole is no more aware of me than I am, say, of a small worm that may be in the heart of my cherub there."
"We do seem pretty small in the face of the stars," said Claire.
"Yes, and so impossible," added Lawrence. "I didn't realize until to-day how utterly impossible I really am."
"But, impossible or not, here you are," Philip laughed.
"Yes, here I am and there I may be, but in either place I am not especially possible. You are; you can go out and make a definite, independent impression on life; that makes you possible in that you are forcing recognition of power and capability. I can't do that. The impression I make is one of incapability. For myself I am impossible, and for others more so."
"Which has nothing to do with God," said Philip, in his tone a touch of distaste.
Lawrence recognized it and became silent.
Claire made him take the quinin and heated bricks for his feet. Philip went out to cut wood for the fire, leaving her alone with the sick man. She was so full of her own wickedness, as she conceived it, that she dared not tell him her thoughts. She wanted to explain that she loved him, that she had loved him all along, but she could not. She looked at him, and felt sure that he had now no love for her.
Lawrence was trying to follow out in his mind a searching inquiry as to his relation to life. "If I could only establish that," he thought, "I could get myself straight and there would be something to start from. If I knew which way to move!" But he was unable to do any coherent thinking. His head ached, his lips burned with fever, and his body kept him busy with the sensation of pain. It seemed to him that illness made his state more detestable, but it also offered him a chance of escape from the whole drab business. He was quite sure that he wanted to escape, and he would not have believed it if any one had told him that he would resist death to the uttermost; yet deep within him was that will to live which had made him the creative artist. It was working, unknown to him, now, toward the reconstruction he so needed.
He turned restlessly, and muttered something about his foolishness. Claire came and sat beside him silently. She was wondering what would happen if she should tell him of her discovery of herself.