gesture that made her pause, a sudden movement of the blind man's right
hand as though it had been stung by the discovery of its own
backwardness.

He dropped it immediately in a sort of despairing way, then threw it up
impatiently. "All no use!" he said. "No use--no use--no use!" The sound
of his despair was in his voice as he let the hand fall again upon his
knee. He gave a heart-broken sigh:--"Oh dear!" and then sat on silent.

Gwen was afraid to speak. For all she knew, her first word might be
choked by a sob. After a few moments he spoke again:--"And there was
I--thinking--thinking...." and stopped short.

"Thinking what?" said Gwen timidly.

"I will tell you some time," he said. "Not now!" And then he drew a long
breath and spoke straight on, as though some obstacle to speech had
gone. "It has been a terrible time, Lady Gwendolen--this first knowledge
of ... of what I have lost. Put recovery aside for a moment--let the
chance of it lie by, until it is on the horizon. Think only what the
black side of the shield means--the appalling darkness in the miserable
time to come--the old age when folk will call me the blind Mr. Torrens;
will say of me:--'You know, he was not born blind--it was an accident--a
gunshot wound--a long while back now.' And all that long while back will
have been a long vacuity to me, and Heaven knows what burden to
others.... I have known it all from the first. I knew it when I waked to
my senses in the room upstairs--to all my senses but one. I knew it when
I heard them speak hopefully of the case; hope means fear, and I knew
what the fear was they were hoping against. That early morning when
stupor came to an end, and my consciousness came back, I remembered all.
But I thought the darkness was only the sweet, wholesome darkness of
night, and my heart beat for the coming of the day. The day came, sure
enough, but I knew nothing of it. The first voice I heard was Mrs.
Bailey's, singing paeans over my recovery. She had been lying in wait for
it, in a chair beside the bed which I picture to myself as a chair of
vast scope and pretensions. I did not use my tongue, when I found it, to
ask where I was--because I knew I was somewhere and the bed was very
comfortable. I asked what o'clock it was, and was told it was near nine.
Then, said I, why not open the shutters and let in the light?"

"What did Mrs. Bailey say?"

"Mrs. Bailey said Lord have mercy, gracious-goodness-her, and I at once
percei