joy of childhood she could remember was
walking hand in hand with her father and telling him the things she
saw; it had been their "game"; and as she grew older and it had ceased
to be merely a game--as she had grown more and more useful to the blind
man, and he had learned more fully to use and trust her--she had found
it only more interesting, a greater pleasure. She had never had any
other ambition--and she had no other now--except to serve her father;
her joy was to be his eyes; her triumph had been when she had found
that, though he searched the world and paid fortunes to find others to
"see" for him, no one could serve him as she could; she had never
thought of herself apart from him.

Now her father had been attacked and injured--attacked foully, while he
slept; he had come close to death, had suffered; he was still
suffering. Certainly she ought to hate, at least be aloof from any
one, every one, against whom the faintest suspicion breathed of having
been concerned in that dastardly attack upon her father; and that she
found herself without aversion to Eaton, when he was with her, now
filled her with shame and remorse.

She crouched lower against this desk which so represented her father in
his power; she felt tears of shame at herself hot on her cold hands.
Then she got up and recollected herself. Her father, when he would
awake, would wish to work; there were certain, important matters he
must decide at once.

Harriet went to the end of the room and to the right of the entrance
door. She looked about, with a habit of caution, and then removed a
number of books from a shelf about shoulder high; she thus exposed a
panel at the back of the bookcase, which she slid back. Behind it
appeared the steel door of a combination wall-safe. She opened it and
took out two large, thick envelopes with tape about them, sealed and
addressed to Basil Santoine; but they were not stamped, for they had
not been through the mail; they had been delivered by a messenger.
Harriet reclosed the safe, concealed it and took the envelopes back to
her father's desk and opened them to examine their contents preparatory
to taking them to him. But even now her mind was not on her work; she
was thinking of Eaton, where he had gone and what he was doing and--was
he thinking of her?

Eaton had left the room, thinking of her. The puzzle of his position
in relation to her, and hers to him, filled his mind too. That she had
been constra