ince now.
I've just come to tell you now that I don't think we ought to wait any
longer about your eyes. We'll try this afternoon, in our little
hospital here. I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will help
me all she can, and I'll do my very best."

"I'm quite ready."

"I don't know whether or not to be glad that you have no curiosity
about your own case," he said presently.

"That only shows you how helpless I am. I have no choice. I have lost
my own identity."

"Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what was
wrong with your eyes?"

"He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis. He
didn't like to answer any questions."

"The old way--adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming of
all professions--medicine! That dates back to bats' wings and toads'
livers as cure for the spleen. But at least and at last he said it was
iritis?"

"Yes. He told me that I might gradually lose one eye--which was true.
He thought the trouble might advance to the other eye. It came out
that way. He must have known."

"Perhaps he knew part," said Doctor Barnes. "You had some pain?"

"Unbearable pain part of the time--over the eyes, in the front of the
head."

"Didn't your doctor tell you what iritis meant?"

"No. I suppose inflammation of the eyes--the iris."

"Precisely. Now, just because you're a woman of intelligence I'm going
to try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you will
know what you are facing."

"I wish you would."

"Very well. Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made up
of cells, of tissues. It can know inflammation. As a result of many
inflammations there is what we call an exudation--a liquid passes from
the tissues. This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier,
something like granulations. The tissues are weak--they exude
something in their distress, in their attempt to correct this condition
when they have been inflamed.

"The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is
the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of
the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film
for the eye's picture.

"Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamed
and began to exude. Such inflammation may come from eye-strain,
sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun on
the snow. Snow-blindness is sometim