then Greeba remembered, with a flash
that fell on her brain like a sword, that her husband was blind now,
and all the beauty of the world was nothing to him. Smitten by this
thought, she stood a moment, while the sunshine died out of her eyes
and the rosy red out of her cheeks. But presently it came to her to
ask herself if Sunlocks was blind forever, and if nothing could be
done for him. This brought back, with pangs of remorse for such long
forgetfulness, the memory of some man, an apothecary in Husavik, who
had the credit of curing many of blindness after accidents in the
northern mines where free men worked for wage. So, thinking of this
apothecary throughout that day and the next, she found at last a
crooked way to send money to him, out of the store that still
remained to her, and to ask him to come to Grimsey.

But, waiting for the coming of the apothecary, a new dread, that was
also a new hope, stole over her.

Since that first day on which her boy and her husband talked
together, and every day thereafter when Sunlocks had called out
"Little Michael! little Michael!" and she had sent the child in, with
his little flaxen curls combed out, his little chubby face rubbed to
a shiny red, and all his little body smelling sweet with the soft
odors of childhood, she had noticed--she could not help it--that
Sunlocks listened for the sound of her own footstep whenever by
chance (which might have been rare) she passed his way.

And at first this was a cause of fear to her, lest he should discover
her before her time came to reveal herself; and then of hope that he
might even do so, and save her against her will from the sickening
pains of hungry waiting; and finally of horror, that perhaps after
all he was thinking of her as another woman. This last thought sent
all the blood of her body tingling into her face, and on the day it
flashed upon her, do what she would she could not but hate him for it
as for an infidelity that might not be forgiven.

"He never speaks of me," she thought, "never thinks of me; I am dead
to him; quite, quite dead and swept out of his mind."

It was a cruel conflict of love and hate, and if it had come to a man
he would have said within himself, "By this token I know that she
whom I love has forgotten me, and may be happy with another some day.
Well, I am nothing--let me go my ways." But that is not the gospel of
a woman's love, with all its sweet, delicious selfishness. So after
Greeba had