"I don't know." She waited to watch a little colored cloud float by, and then continued: "Isn't the real interest in life the game you play?"
"I suppose it is, but it's hard on other people."
"Why—and how?"
"Suppose," Lawrence said slowly, "you were the one thing I thought I needed."
Claire leaned toward him, her lips apart, her heart beating wildly.
"Suppose I were sure of it, and set about to make you part of my life, well, if I succeeded and then"—he smiled sadly—"found that you were not the necessity, not the answer to my need, what of you? It would be an inferno for you, and none the less equally terrible for me! We couldn't help it. Under such circumstances you would be right in saying that I had been unfair. I don't know, certainly you would be right in charging your possible unhappiness to me."
"Under your supposition, Lawrence," she answered evenly, "if you obtained my love, wouldn't it then be my game, my risk in the great gamble for deeper life? Wouldn't it be my mistake for having thought you were what I needed?"
"What if you still thought you needed me after I was sure that I did not need you?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I am too fond of life and too eager to know its possibilities to let that hurt me long. Possibly I should weep, be cynical, maybe even do something desperate, but at last I would come up smiling, calm in the faith that my life was deeper, richer for the experience, and that yours was, too. Or if it proved that yours was not, I should be amused at the shallowness of the Claire that was, for having been so simple a dunce as to imagine that you were worth while. I should thank you for teaching the present Claire to forsake that shallow one, and should find you a rung on my ladder of life!"
He laughed merrily. "You are strong in your faith, Claire."