PRECEDING CHAPTERS BRIEFLY RETOLD
When Lawrence Gordon, numb with cold and hunger, after weeks of weary wandering through the mountains in a desperate effort to find a habitation, came in sight of the mountaineer's little cabin, he dropped the woman from his breaking arms and fell, exhausted and unconscious, in the snow.
Flung into the sea when the ship foundered, he had eventually found his way to the beach, and here he stumbled on the unconscious form of Claire Barkley.
Mrs. Barkley's ankle had been sprained in the wreck and she was unable to walk. The man was strong, dominant, and unafraid; but he was blind.
Carrying the woman in his arms the blind man had stumbled half across the Andes, for the boat was wrecked off the coast of Chile, and Philip Ortez, whose cabin they had reached, declared they were on the borders of Bolivia, about two hundred miles from the nearest railroad station.
This Spanish scholar, gentleman, and recluse readily welcomed two such promising guests for the winter. A charming woman of twenty-six, with a mind as well as emotions, and a man not much older, who was both a philosopher and an artist, promised no end of diversion for the winter.
And diversion, not to say, drama, came—the eternal triangle.
Lawrence was slow in admitting his love for Claire, even to himself. And Claire, who was affronted by the seeming cold and calculating indifference of this big, blind god, suddenly realized his apparent coldness held the very heart of passion itself.
In the playful scramble of a snow-fight before the cabin, Lawrence had taken her by the waist to wash her face with snow, and the contact of her tightly held body betrayed the tensity of the man's feeling. Claire broke from his grasp to look into the eyes of Philip, who had stood in the doorway to watch the fun. In the eyes of the Spaniard she detected the emotion she felt in the touch of the blind sculptor.
The next day, to relieve the suppressed passion in her own as well as Lawrence's soul, she proposed to go with Philip, as she sometimes did, when he went out to spend the day with his traps.