"I know I could."
He stooped and took up a handful of snow.
She did the same and said gaily, "Two washed faces seem inevitable."
Lawrence laughed and caught her around the waist. Her blood tingled, and her throat hurt as if she would choke. She began to struggle desperately, frightened at her own emotion. He laughed, and held her tighter with one arm while he tried to reach her face with the other hand. She was pressed against him, and they swayed back and forth, while Philip laughed from the doorway. Her heart was beating trip-hammer blows against her breast, she gasped for breath, and her eyes closed. His hand reached her face, and she ducked against his shoulder.
"Lawrence! Lawrence!" she sobbed. Her voice startled him. Its pleading, yielding intensity sent his own blood racing. He let her go, and stepped back quickly while his breath came short.
"Pardon me, Claire," he muttered, and turned away.
Claire saw Philip watching them, in his eyes a strange, new glitter. She rushed past him to the cabin and into her little room.
It was a silent dinner they ate that day.
Claire was deeply, bitterly humiliated, and she kept seeing again and again with exaggerated clearness that look in Philip's eyes when she had staggered free from Lawrence's arms. It burned in her mind like an unquenchable coal, and she revolted at it. She was utterly unable to collect her thoughts. She fancied she could still feel the warm pressure of Lawrence's body while she suffered untold agony of soul for having been carried away by his touch. She reproached herself with a scorn that seared for having ever allowed herself to engage in that silly scuffle.
She could scarcely bear to sit at the table with Philip, and she did not once look in his direction. In her heart there was no anger against Lawrence, only a dull, aching dread, tempered with a longing she did not attempt to analyze.