say it wrong, and you
will think me an odd girl; or unfeeling; which is worse."

"I should do nothing of the sort. But I'll tell you what I should
think--what I have thought all this time I have been hearing your
voice--I merely mention it as a thing of pathological interest...."

"Go on."

"I should think it didn't matter what you said so long as you went on
speaking. Because whenever I hear your voice I can shut my eyes and
forget that I am blind."

"Is that empty compliment, or are you in earnest?"

"I was jesting a minute ago, but now I am in earnest. I mean what I say.
Your voice takes the load off my heart and the darkness off my brain,
and we are standing again by that stone bridge over yonder--Arthur's
Bridge--and I see you in all your beauty--oh! such beauty--as I look up
from Ply's cut collar against the sunset sky. That was my last hour of
vision, and its memory will go with me to the grave. And now when I hear
your voice, it all comes back to me, and the terrible darkness has
vanished--or the sense of it anyhow!..."

"If that is so you shall hear it until your sight comes back--it
will--it must!"

"How if it never comes back? How if I remain as I am now for life?"

"I shall not lose my voice."

How it came about neither could ever say; but each knew that it happened
then, just at that turn in the conversation, and that no one came
rushing into the drawing-room as they easily might have done--this lax
structure of language was employed later in reference to it--nor did any
of the thousand interruptions occur that might have occurred. Mrs.
Bailey might have come to Mr. Torrens to know how many g's there were in
agreeable, or a tea-collector might have prowled in to add relics to her
collection, or even the sound of the carriage afar--inaudible by
man--might have caused Achilles to requisition the opening of the
drawing-room door, that he might rush away to sanction its arrival. Two
guardian angels--the story thinks--stopped any of these things
happening. What did happen was that Gwen and Adrian, who a moment before
were nominally a lady and gentleman chatting on a sofa near the piano,
whose separation involved no consequences definable for either, were
standing speechless in each other's arms--speechless but waiting for the
power to speak. For nobody can articulate whose heart is thumping out of
all reason. He has to wait--or she, as may be. One of each is needed to
develope an earthquake of this p