d afresh, and he thought to
himself that he must avoid scenes like that. He was not, it appeared,
wholly immune from the old virus.

And he was clearly conscious of the cold voice of reason warning him
against Myra. Sitting there in the shadow of his silent house, he
puzzled over these new complexities of feeling. He was a little
bewildered. To him Doris meant everything that Myra had once been. He
wanted only to retain what he had. He did not want to salvage anything
from the wreckage of the past. He was too deeply concerned with the
dreadful test that fully restored eyesight would impose on Doris. He
knew that Doris Cleveland's feeling for him had been profound and
vital. She had given too many proofs for him to doubt that. But would
it survive? He did not know. He hoped a little and feared much.

Above this fear he found himself now bewildered by this fresh swirl of
emotion. He knew that if Myra had flung herself into his arms he would
have found some strange comfort in that embrace, that he could not
possibly have repulsed her. It was a prop to his soul--or was it, he
asked himself, merely his vanity?--that Myra could look behind the
grimness of his features and dwell fondly on the essential man, on the
reality behind that dreadful mask.

Still, Hollister knew that to be only a mood, that unexpected
tenderness for a woman whom he had hated for betraying him. It was
Doris he wanted. The thought of her passing out of his life rested
upon him like an intolerable burden. To be in doubt of her afflicted
him with anguish. That the fires of her affection might dwindle and
die before daily sight of him loomed before Hollister as the
consummation of disaster,--and he seemed to feel that hovering near,
closely impending.

That they had lived together sixteen months did not count. That she
had borne him a child,--neither did that count. That she had pillowed
her brown head nightly in the crook of his arm--that he had bestowed a
thousand kisses on her lips, her hair, her neck--that she had lain
beside him hour after hour through the long nights, drowsily
content--none of these intimacies counted beside vision. He was a
stranger in the dark. She did not know him. She heard his voice, knew
his tenderness, felt the touch of him,--the unseen lover. But there
remained for her the revelation of sight. He was still the mysterious,
the unknown, about which her fancies played.

How could he know what image of him, what ideal, resi