nned
to climb Craig Vohr next summer for the sake of the fine view? Not much
use my attempting it now, I am afraid--unless you went with me, and told
me what you saw."

She did not say a word. He waited a moment, but none came; and he could
not see the tears that were in her eyes. Perhaps he divined that they
were there.

"It has been coming on for some time," he said, still in the cheerful
tone which he had made himself adopt. "I was nearly certain of it when I
was here in January; and since then I have seen some famous oculists,
and spent a good deal of time in a dark room--with no very good result.
Nothing can be done."

"Nothing? Absolutely nothing?"

"Nothing at all. I must bear it as other men have done. I am rather old
to frame my life anew, and I shall never equal Mr. Fawcett in energy and
power, though I think I shall take him as my model," said Rupert, with a
rather sad smile, "but I must do my best, and I dare say I shall get
used to it in time. Kitty, I thought--somehow--that I should like to
hear you say that you were sorry.... And you have not said it yet."

"I am sorry," said Kitty, in a low voice.

The tears were falling over her pale cheeks, but she did not turn away
her head--why should she? He could not see.

"I have been a fool," said Vivian, with the unusual energy of utterance
which struck her as something new in him. "I am thirty-eight--twenty
years older than you, Kitty--and I have missed half the happiness that I
might have got out of my life, and squandered the other half. I will
tell you what happened when I was a lad of one-and-twenty--before you
were a year old, Kitty: think of that!--I fell in love with a woman some
years older than myself. She was a barmaid. Can you fancy me now in love
with a barmaid? I find it hard to imagine, myself. I married her, Kitty.
Before we had been married six weeks I discovered that she drank. I was
tied to a drunken, brawling, foul-mouthed woman of the lower class--for
life. At least I thought it was for life."

He paused, and asked with peculiar gentleness:--

"Am I telling you this at a wrong time? Shall I leave my story for
another day? You are thinking of him, perhaps: I am not without thoughts
of him, too, even in the story that I tell. Shall I stop, or shall I go
on?"

"Go on, please. I want to hear. Yes, as well now as any other time. You
married. What then?"

Could it be Kitty who was speaking? Rupert scarcely recognised those
broken, u