If Claire suffered, it must be because the world was too
inferior for hope of any kind.
Lee was not unaware of the incongruity of his position, for he was
equally ignoring the needs of two others, Peyton and Mina Raff. It was
evident to him now, since he had seen her in a picture, that she was
well worth the greatest consideration. She lay outside the stream of
ordinary responsibilities. What held him steady was the belief that she
and Peyton were not so important to each other as they thought; Claire
needed him more badly than Mina. There was a possibility--no, it was
probable--that Claire deserted would develop into an individual as
empty and as vacantly sounding as a drum. She had said as much. Her
heritage, together with its splendors of courage and charm, signally
carried that menace.
* * * * *
So much, joined to what already was thronging his thoughts, brought
Lee's mind to resemble the sheet of an enormous ledger covered with a
jumble of figures apparently beyond any reduction to an answer. He was
considering Claire and Mina Raff, Mina and Claire, at a hunt breakfast
at Willing Spencer's in Nantbrook Valley, north of Eastlake, when, with
a plate of food in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, he
collided with Peyton Morris, his face pinched and his eyes dull from a
lack of rest. The Spencer house was sparely furnished, a square
unimpressive dwelling principally adapted to the early summers of its
energetic children; and Peyton and Lee Randon allowed themselves to be
crowded into the bare angle formed by a high inner door.
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