and retirement
would be comparatively easy to him; but that having waited in vain for
any such assurance he was entitled to act as if the door were not really
closed or were at any rate not cruelly locked. He was naturally much
struck with my anecdote and still more with my interpretation of it.

"There _is_ something, there _is_ something--possibly something
very grave, certainly something that requires she should make use of
artificial aids. She won't admit it publicly, because with her idolatry
of her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aids
nothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement. She has used them in
secret, but that is evidently not enough, for the affection she suffers
from, apparently some definite ailment, has lately grown much worse. She
looked straight at me in the shop, which was violently lighted, without
seeing it was I. At the same distance, at Folkestone, where as you know
I first met her, where I heard this mystery hinted at and where she
indignantly denied the thing, she appeared easily enough to recognise
people. At present she couldn't really make out anything the shop-girl
showed her. She has successfully concealed from the man I saw her with
that she resorts in private to a pince-nez and that she does so not only
under the strictest orders from an oculist, but because literally the
poor thing can't accomplish without such help half the business of life.
Iffield however has suspected something, and his suspicions, whether
expressed or kept to himself, have put him on the watch. I happened to
have a glimpse of the movement at which he pounced on her and caught her
in the act."

I had thought it all out; my idea explained many things, and Dawling
turned pale as he listened to me.

"Was he rough with her?" he anxiously asked.

"How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place."

My companion stared at me a moment. "Do you mean to say her eyesight's
going?"

"Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?"

"How _does_ she take life? That's the question!" He sat there
bewilderedly brooding; the tears had come into his eyes; they reminded
me of those I had seen in Flora's the day I risked my inquiry. The
question he had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was ready to
answer, but I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my reflections
had suggested. I was indeed privately astonished at their ingenuity.
For the present I