at the very first
thing I should have to say to her would be that she must absolutely sit
to me again.

XIII

She gave me the smile once more as over her shoulder, from her chair,
she turned her face to me. "Here you are again!" she exclaimed with her
disgloved hand put up a little backward for me to take. I dropped into
a chair just behind her and, having taken it and noted that one of the
curtains of the box would make the demonstration sufficiently private,
bent my lips over it and impressed them on its finger-tips. It was given
me however, to my astonishment, to feel next that all the privacy in
the world couldn't have sufficed to mitigate the start with which she
greeted this free application of my moustache: the blood had jumped
to her face, she quickly recovered her hand and jerked at me, twisting
herself round, a vacant, challenging stare. During the next few instants
several extraordinary things happened, the first of which was that now
I was close to them the eyes of loveliness I had come up to look into
didn't show at all the conscious light I had just been pleased to
see them flash across the house: they showed on the contrary, to my
confusion, a strange, sweet blankness, an expression I failed to give a
meaning to until, without delay, I felt on my arm, directed to it as if
instantly to efface the effect of her start, the grasp of the hand she
had impulsively snatched from me. It was the irrepressible question
in this grasp that stopped on my lips all sound of salutation. She had
mistaken my entrance for that of another person, a pair of lips without
a moustache. She was feeling me to see who I was! With the perception of
this and of her not seeing me I sat gaping at her and at the wild
word that didn't come, the right word to express or to disguise my
stupefaction. What was the right word to commemorate one's sudden
discovery, at the very moment too at which one had been most encouraged
to count on better things, that one's dear old friend had gone blind?
Before the answer to this question dropped upon me--and the moving
moments, though few, seemed many--I heard, with the sound of voices, the
click of the attendant's key on the other side of the door. Poor Flora
heard also, and with the hearing, still with her hand on my arm, she
brightened again as I had a minute since seen her brighten across the
house: she had the sense of the return of the person she had taken me
for--the person with the right