gone, sitting on a log together in
the warm sun, with the baby kicking his heels on the spread quilt.
They continued the discussion after they went back to the house.
Hollister dreaded uncertainty. He wanted to know how great a measure
of her sight would return, and in what time. He did not belittle the
oculists because they had once mistaken. Neither did Doris, when she
recovered from the excitement engendered by the definite assurance
that her eyes were ever so slightly resuming their normal function.
She did believe that her sight was being restored naturally, as torn
flesh heals or a broken bone knits, and she was doubtful if any eye
specialist could help that process. But she agreed in the end that it
would be as well to know if anything could be done and what would aid
instead of retard her recovery.

"But not for awhile," she said. "It's just a glimmer. Wait a few
days. If this fog keeps clearing away, then we'll go."

They were sitting on their porch steps. Doris put her arms around him.

"When I can see, I'll be a real partner," she said happily. "There are
so many things I can do that can't be done without eyes. And half the
fun of living is in sharing the discoveries one makes about things
with some one else. Sight will give me back all the books I want to
read, all the beautiful things I want to see. I'll be able to climb
hills and paddle a canoe, to go with you wherever you want to take me.
Won't it be splendid? I've only been half a woman. I have wondered
sometimes how long it would be before you grew weary of my moods and
my helplessness."

And Hollister could only pat her cheek and tell her that he loved her,
that her eyes made no difference. He could not voice the fear he had
that her recovered sight would make the greatest difference, that the
reality of him, the distorted visage which peered at him from a mirror
would make her loathe him. He was not a fool. He knew that people, the
women especially, shrank from the crippled, the disfigured, the
malformed, the horrible. That had been his experience. It had very
nearly driven him mad. He had no illusions about the men who worked
for him, about his neighbors. They found him endurable, and that was
about all. If Doris Cleveland had seen him clearly that day on the
steamer, if she had been able to critically survey the unlovely thing
that war had made of him, she might have pitied him. But would she
have found pleasure in the sound of his voice, the to