And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the fever passed. Almost
in mid-stride he became another man, a healed, sane man, keenly
aware of a very vivid thirst and a desire to sit down and rest
before attempting the ten miles of cement road that lay between
him and home. Half an hour at a wayside inn completed the cure. It
was a weary but clear-headed Bill who trudged back through the
gathering dusk.
He found himself thinking of Claire as of someone he had known
long ago, someone who had never touched his life. She seemed so
far away that he wondered how she could ever have affected him for
pain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm. This is the
real difference between love and infatuation, that infatuation
can be slain cleanly with a single blow. In the hour of clear
vision which had come to him, Bill saw that he had never loved
Claire. It was her beauty that had held him, that and the appeal
which her circumstances had made to his pity. Their minds had not
run smoothly together. Always there had been something that
jarred, a subtle antagonism. And she was crooked.
Almost unconsciously his mind began to build up an image of the
ideal girl, the girl he would have liked Claire to be, the girl
who would conform to all that he demanded of woman. She would be
brave.
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