or
foreign, to the trouble of coming to Dimchurch."

"I don't think I understand you," I answered. "You cannot surely mean to
say that you would not have been glad, under any circumstances, to
recover your sight?"

"That is just what I do mean to say."

"What! you, who have written to Grosse to hurry the operation, don't care
to see?"

"I only care to see Oscar. And, what is more, I only care to see him
because I am in love with him. But for that, I really don't feel as if it
would give me any particular pleasure to use my eyes. I have been blind
so long, I have learnt to do without them."

"And yet, you looked perfectly entranced when Nugent first set you
doubting whether you were blind for life?"

"Nugent took me by surprise," she answered; "Nugent startled me out of my
senses. I have had time to think since; I am not carried away by the
enthusiasm of the moment now. You people who can see attach such an
absurd importance to your eyes! I set my touch, my dear, against your
eyes, as much the most trustworthy, and much the most intelligent sense
of the two. If Oscar was not, as I have said, the uppermost feeling with
me, shall I tell you what I should have infinitely preferred to
recovering my sight--supposing it could have been done?" She shook her
head with a comic resignation to circumstances. "Unfortunately, it can't
be done!"

"What can't be done?"

She suddenly held out both her arms over the breakfast-table.

"The stretching out of _these_ to an enormous and unheard-of length. That
is what I should have liked!" she answered. "I could find out better what
was going on at a distance with my hands, than you could with your eyes
and your telescopes. What doubts I might set at rest for instance about
the planetary system, among the people who can see, if I could only
stretch out far enough to touch the stars."

"This is talking sheer nonsense, Lucilla!"

"Is it? Just tell me which knows best in the dark--my touch or your eyes?
Who has got a sense that she can always trust to serve her equally well
through the whole four-and-twenty hours? You or me? But for Oscar--to
speak in sober earnest, this time--I tell you I would much rather perfect
the sense in me that I have already got, than have a sense given to me
that I have _not_ got. Until I knew Oscar, I don't think I ever honestly
envied any of you the use of your eyes."

"You astonish me, Lucilla!"

She rattled her teaspoon impatiently in her empty cu