Brian found
the chance he'd wished for, to get at the _real_ girl, behind her sulky
"camouflage."

He has repeated the whole conversation to me, because he wanted me to
know Dierdre as he has learned to know her; and I shall write everything
down as I remember it, though the words mayn't be precisely right. Never
was there any one like Brian for drawing out confidences from shut-up
souls (except _you_, Padre!) if he chooses to open his own soul, for
that end; and apparently he thought it worth while in the case of
Dierdre. He began by telling her things about himself--his old hopes and
ambitions and the change in them since his blindness. He confessed to
the girl (as he confessed to me long ago) how at first he wished
desperately to die, because life without eyesight wasn't life. He has so
loved colour, and beauty, and success in his work had been so close,
that he felt he couldn't endure blindness.

"I came near being a coward," he said. "A man who puts an end to his
life because he's afraid to face it is a coward. So I tried to see if I
could readjust the balance. I fell back on my imagination--and it saved
me. Imagination was always my best friend! It took me by the hand and
led me into a garden--a secret sort of garden that belongs to the blind,
and to no one else. It's the place where the spirits of colour and the
spirits of flowers live--the spirit of music, too--and all sorts of
beautiful strange things which people who've never been blind can't
see--or even hear. They're not '_things_,' exactly. They're more like
the reality behind the things: God's thoughts of things as they should
be, before He created them; artists' thoughts of their pictures;
musicians' thoughts of their compositions--all better than the things
resulting from the thoughts. Nothing in the outside world is as
wonderful as what grows in that garden! I couldn't go on being unhappy
there. Nobody could--once he'd found the way in."

"It must be hard finding the way in!" Dierdre said.

"It is at first--alone, without help. That's why, if I can, I want to
help my fellow blind men to get there."

"Only men? Not women, too?"

"I've never met a blind woman. Probably I never shall."

"You're talking to one this minute! When I'm with you, I always feel as
if I were blind, and you could see."

"You're unjust to yourself."

"No, but I'm unjust to you--I mean, I have been. I must tell you before
we go on, because you're too kind, too generous. I