I wish I knew."

"I know one thing," Myra put in quickly. "And that is you won't do
your eyes any good by trying so hard to see. You mustn't get excited
about this and overdo it. If it's a natural recovery, you won't help
it any by trying so hard to see."

"Do I seem excited?" Doris smiled. "Perhaps I am. If you had been shut
up for three years in a room without windows, I fancy you'd be excited
at even the barest chance of finding yourself free to walk in the sun.
My God, no one with sight knows the despair that the blind sometimes
feel. And the promise of seeing--you can't possibly imagine what a
glorious thing it is. Every one has always been good to me. I've been
lucky in so many ways. But there have been times--you know, don't you,
Bob?--when it has been simply hell, when I struggled in a black abyss,
afraid to die and yet full of bitter protest against the futility of
living."

The tears stood in her eyes and she reached for Hollister's hand, and
squeezed it tightly between her own.

"What a lot of good times we shall have when I get so that I can see
just a little better," she said affectionately. "Your blind woman may
not prove such a bad bargain, after all, Bob."

"Have I ever thought that?" he demanded.

"Oh, no," she said smiling, "but _I_ know. Give me the baby, Myra."

She cuddled young Robert in her arms.

"Little, fat, soft thing," she murmured. "By and by his mother will be
able to see the color of his dear eyes. Bless its little heart--him
and his daddy are the bestest things in this old world--this old world
that was black so long."

Myra turned her back on them, walked away and stood on the river bank.
Hollister stared at his wife. He struggled with an old sensation, one
that he had thought long put by,--a sense of the intolerable burden of
existence in which nothing was sure but sorrow. And he was aware that
he must dissemble all such feelings. He must not let Doris know how
he dreaded that hour in which she should first see clearly his
mutilated face.

"You ought to see an oculist," he said at last.

"An oculist? Eye specialists--I saw a dozen of them," she replied.
"They were never able to do anything--except to tell me I would never
see again. A fig for the doctors. They were wrong when they said my
sight was wholly destroyed. They'd probably be wrong again in the
diagnosis and treatment. Nature seems to be doing the job. Let her
have her way."

They discussed that after Myra was