oved. He wondered how she could. For
months he had encountered women's averted faces, the reluctant glances
of mingled pity and distaste which he had schooled himself to expect
and endure but which he never ceased to resent. This girl's uncommon
self-possession at close contact with him was a puzzle as well as a
pleasure. A little thing, to be sure, but it warmed Hollister. It was
like an unexpected gleam of sunshine out of a sky banked deep with
clouds.

Presently, to his surprise, the girl spoke to him.

"Are we getting near the Channel Islands?"

She was looking directly at him, and Hollister was struck afresh with
the curious quality of her gaze, the strangely unperturbed directness
of her eyes upon him. He made haste to answer her question.

"We'll pass between them in another mile. You can see the western
island a little off our starboard bow."

"I should be very glad if I could; but I shall have to take your word
for its being there."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

A smile spread over her face at the puzzled tone.

"I'm blind," she explained, with what struck Hollister as infinite
patience. "If my eyes were not sightless, I shouldn't have to ask a
stranger about the Channel Islands. I used to be able to see them well
enough."

Hollister stared at her. He could not associate those wide gray eyes
with total darkness. He could scarcely make himself comprehend a world
devoid of light and color, an existence in which one felt and breathed
and had being amid eternal darkness. Yet for the moment he was selfish
enough to feel glad. And he said so, with uncharacteristic
impulsiveness.

"I'm glad you can't see," he found himself saying. "If you could----"

"What a queer thing to say," the girl interrupted. "I thought every
one always regarded a blind person as an object of pity."

There was an unmistakably sardonic inflection in the last sentence.

"But you don't find it so, eh?" Hollister questioned eagerly. He was
sure he had interpreted that inflection. "And you sometimes resent
that attitude, eh?"

"I daresay I do," the girl replied, after a moment's consideration.
"To be unable to see is a handicap. At the same time to have pity
drooled all over one is sometimes irritating. But why did you just say
you were glad I was blind?"

"I didn't mean that. I meant that I was glad you couldn't see _me_,"
he explained. "One of Fritz's shells tore my face to pieces. People
don't like to look at the r