with fear; for a cry had come to their ears. A cry which even Stephen
knew as Pearl's. The mother ran to the window.

The balcony was empty. She came back into the room, and, ran to the
door.

But on the instant a voice that both women knew was heard from without:

'Help there! Help, I say! The child has fainted. Is there no one
there? And I am blind!'

CHAPTER XXXVI--LIGHT

Harold had been in a state of increasing restlessness. The month of
waiting which Dr. Hilton had laid down for him seemed to wear away with
extraordinary slowness; this was increased by the lack of companionship,
and further by the cutting off of even the little episodes usual to daily
life. His patience, great as it was naturally and trained as it had been
by the years of self-repression, was beginning to give way. Often and
often there came over him a wild desire to tear off the irksome bandages
and try for himself whether the hopes held out to him were being even
partially justified. He was restrained only by the fear of perpetual
blindness, which came over him in a sort of cold wave at each reaction.
Time, too, added to his fear of discovery; but he could not but think
that his self-sought isolation must be a challenge to the curiosity of
each and all who knew of it. And with all these disturbing causes came
the main one, which never lessened but always grew: that whatever might
happen Stephen would be further from him than ever. Look at the matter
how he would; turn it round in whatsoever possible or impossible way, he
could see no relief to this gloomy conclusion.

For it is in the nature of love that it creates or enlarges its own pain.
If troubles or difficulties there be from natural causes, then it will
exaggerate them into nightmare proportions. But if there be none, it
will create them. Love is in fact the most serious thing that comes to
man; where it exists all else seem as phantoms, or at best as actualities
of lesser degree. During the better part of two years his troubles had
but slept; and as nothing wakes the pangs of old love better than the
sound of a voice, all the old acute pain of love and the agony that
followed its denial were back with him. Surely he could never, never
believe that Stephen did not mean what she had said to him that morning
in the beech grove. All his new resolution not to hamper her with the
burden of a blind and lonely-hearted man was back to the full.

In such mood had he