"We slipped out of our clothes in trembling silence and huddled together in her mother's bed. She was crying, and I felt very brave. I put my arms around her and comforted her. She became quiet by and by and slipped her arms around me. After that we found ourselves.
"She said we were in love, and I guess we were. That night was the beginning of my rebellious manhood. Her mother abused us roundly for immoral little whiffits. I was put out, and after that the county kept me. Georgia hated me, for she said I was to blame.
"I suppose that was all right, too, but it made me bitter against what seemed to me an unjust world. I went back to school, hating. I never stopped hating as long as I was there. It was misunderstanding from first to last. I never ceased rebelling against punishment for rebellion.
"It was a hopeless snarl, but it made me what I was when I entered college, distant, sullen, and ferocious. My only joy was in my work, and I spent all my spare time in the studio. Then the second summer I shot off the gunpowder, and blindness came."
Lawrence lay back silent, then began again.
"After the accident it was a thousand times worse. I thought people didn't like me because I was blind. They only pitied and misunderstood. Misunderstood—that word might be my epitaph. It could certainly be placed over my childhood's grave.
"It was in college that I started thinking. Thought out my plan of militant egoism. It seemed to succeed, but all the time I was afraid it was only pity that sold my work. You know, Claire, as you said, I've got to do it all over again. All of it, building a new platform, a new work-bench. I've got to allow for things. I've got to understand."
In her tension, Claire walked the floor. Would he never stop? That glimpse into his life at the widow's—who was Pearly?—and what a tough little gang he must have grown up with! Poor boy!
He did not talk much for a long time, then he kept repeating: "I must build a new work-bench, Claire. That's the thing to do."
She felt at times that she must scream at him, then she would be all motherly tenderness. "Lawrence," she would whisper, "do it, my man. You can, my laddie."