"And two dear hands and a very wonderful personality that makes me doubly able," he said softly.
They wandered out across the plateau in the direction from which they had first entered it. Their conversation was broken and often meaningless, but eminently pleasing to them both.
"Dear heart," Claire mused softly, "you don't know what that poor, freezing, underfed woman in your naked arms felt when she heard you muttering that you needed her, as you stumbled down this ravine."
"How did she feel?"
Claire was dreaming back, and she wanted to tell him, but she found her emotions too complex and too rapid for expression.
"And then when you added that it was to use her as a subject for a stone image," laughed Claire, "she was furious with you, and yet she was very sure that she didn't want you to care about her in any other way."
"Then perhaps I am making a mistake," he jested.
"Perhaps, my dearest, but I am so glad of it that I don't care if you are."
He caught her in his arms. They were very near the great point in lovers' lives when emotions always tend to break all restraint. She clung to him passionately, her lips yielding and holding his in a rapture of love. Together they swayed toward a great tree and sat down.
When they returned to the cabin, they were surprised to find Philip still gone. With the whimsicality of lovers, they dismissed him from their thoughts and sat down in the armchair together, laughing and talking of the past. Their conversation ran gradually into a clearly defined discussion in which both minds were compelled to think quickly, and they found new joy in their love. Even now, when their whole minds were swayed by emotion, they were able to think, to talk, and to be alive to everything in the world of intellect.