s sister, he never yet left her in the lurch.

He and I both knew the house with our eyes shut, before the war; and
now that Brian is blind, he practises in the most reckless way going
about by himself. He refused to be led to the _salon_: he came unaided
and unerring: and I thought when he appeared at the door, I'd never seen
him look so beautiful. He _is_ beautiful you know! Now that his physical
eyesight is gone, and he's developing that mysterious "inner sight" of
which he talks, there's no other adjective which truly expresses him. He
stood there for a minute with his hand on the door-knob, with all the
light in the room (there wasn't much) shining straight into his face. It
couldn't help doing that, as the one window is nearly opposite the door;
but really it does seem sometimes that light seeks Brian's face, as the
"spot light" in theatres follows the hero or heroine of a play.

There was an asking smile on his lips, and--by accident, of course--his
dear blind eyes looked straight at Mrs. Beckett. We are enough alike, we
twins, for any one to know at a glance that we're brother and sister, so
the Becketts would have known, of course, even if I hadn't cried out in
surprise, "Brian!"

They took it for granted that Brian would have heard all about their son
Jim; so, touched by the pathos of his blindness--the lonely pathos (for
a blind man is as lonely as a daylight moon!) Mrs. Beckett almost ran to
him and took his hand.

"We're the Becketts, with your sister," she said. "Jimmy's father and
mother. I expect you didn't meet him when they were getting engaged to
each other at St. Raphael. But he loved your picture that he bought just
before the war. He used to say, if only you'd signed it, his whole life
might have been different. That was when he'd lost Mary, you see--and
he'd got hold of her name quite wrong. He thought it was Ommalee, and we
never knew a word about the engagement, or her real name or anything,
till the letter came to us at our hotel to-day. Then we hurried around
here, as quick as we could; and she promised to be our adopted daughter.
That means you will have to be our adopted son!"

I think Mrs. Beckett is too shy to like talking much at ordinary times.
She would rather let her big husband talk, and listen admiringly to him.
But this _wasn't_ an ordinary time. To see Brian stand at the door,
wistful and alone, gave her a pain in her heart, so she rushed to him,
and poured out all these kind w