an Fleda could bear. She grew suddenly
thin and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look of yearning which
only comes to those whose sorrow is for another. Old Gabriel Druse was
emphatic in his encouragement, but his face reflected the trouble in
that of his daughter. He knew well that if Ingolby remained blind he
would never marry Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her nature,
almost fanatical in its convictions, she would sacrifice herself, if
sacrifice was the name for it. The New York expert had prophesied and
promised, but who could tell! There was the chance of failure, and the
vanished eye-surgeon had the thousand dollars in his pocket.

Two people, however, were cheerful; they were Ingolby and Jim. Jim went
about the place humming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he brought
Berry the barber to play to his Chief on the cottonfield fiddle. Nigger
Jim, though it was two generations gone which linked him with the
wilds of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagination, and in
Ingolby's own mind there was the persistent superstition that all would
be well, because of a dream he had had. He dreamed he heard his dead
mother's voice in the room, where he lay. She had called him by name,
and had said: "Look at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," and
she had said again,

"Look at me, my son!" Then he thought that he had looked at her, had
seen her face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, shining
and sweet and good. She had said to him in days long gone, that if
she could ever speak to him across the Void, she would; and he had the
fullest belief now that she had done so.

So it was that this dreadnought of industry and organization, in dock
for repairs, cheerfully awaited the hour when he would be launched again
upon the tide of work-healthy, healed and whole. At last there came
the day when, for an instant, the bandages could be removed. There were
present, Rockwell, Fleda, and Jim--Jim, pale but grinning, at the foot
of the bed; Fleda, with her back against the door and her hands clenched
behind her as though to shut out the invading world. Never had her heart
beat as it beat now, but her eyes were steady and bright. There was
in them, however, a kind of pleading look. She could not see Ingolby's
face; did not want to see it when the bandages were taken off; but at
the critical moment she shut her eyes and her back held the door, as
though a thousand were trying to for