articular kind.

It was just as well that the Hon. Percival Pellew and Aunt Constance
Smith-Dickenson, who had started to walk from the flower-show with a
couple of young monkeys whose object in life was to spare everybody else
their company from selfish motives, did _not_ come rushing into the
drawing-room just then, but a quarter of an hour later. For even if the
parties had caught the sound of their arrival in time, the peculiarity
of Mr. Torrens' blindness would have stood in the way of any successful
pretence that he and Lady Gwendolen had been keeping their distance up
to Society point. We know how easy it is for normal people, when caught,
to pretend they are looking at dear Sarah's interesting watercolours
together, or anything of that sort. And even if the blind man had been
able to strike a bar or two carelessly on the piano, to advertise his
isolation, their faces would have betrayed them. Not that the tears of
either could have been identified on the face of the other. It was a
matter of expression. Every situation in this world has a stamp of its
own for the human face, and no stamp is more easily identified than that
on the face of lovers who have just found each other out.

* * * * *

Anyhow this story cannot go on, until the absurd tempest that has passed
over these two allows them to speak. Then they do so on an absolutely
new footing, and the man calls the girl his dearest and his own, and
Heaven knows what else. There one sees the difference between the B.C.
and A.D. of the Nativity of Love. It is a new Era. Call it the Hegira,
if you like.

"I saw you once, dear love,"--he is saying--"I saw you once, and it was
you--you--you! The worst that Fate has in store for me cannot kill the
memory of that moment. And if blindness was to be the price of this--of
this--why, I would sooner be blind, and have it, than have all the eyes
of Argus and ... and starve."

"You wouldn't know you were starving," says Gwen, who is becoming
normal--resuming the equanimities. "Besides, you would be such a Guy.
No--please don't! Somebody's coming!"

"Nobody's coming. It's all right. I tell you, Gwen, or Gwendolen--do you
know I all but called you that, when you came in, before we sang...?"

"Why didn't you quite? However, I'm not sorry you didn't on the whole.
It might have seemed paternal, and I should have felt squashed. And then
it might never have happened at all, and I should just ha