Irma heaved a deep sigh.
"Do you understand what I mean?" asked the blind man.
"Yes, indeed. Go on, I like to hear your voice."
"I knew it, and that's why I have come to you. I was down at the farm, but they were all out harvesting, and the child's maid told me that you were up here and so I came to you. I walked a good part of this way before, when I was overtaken by the storm, and I can now, in memory, renew the pleasure with which I once beheld these mountains. What I then told you I intended to do, has come to pass. I have all the beautiful landscapes within me. I can see the sparkling sunlight, the brook leaping over the rocks, the sparkling lake, and the trees standing side by side in the peaceful forest. I kept constantly telling my guide where we were. He was quite beside himself to think that I knew it all so well. But the best of it all is that I have beautiful human images in my mind. My greatest desire was to see you once more. I say 'to see you,'--I mean, to hear you speak, but I see you when you speak."
Irma replied, telling him how well she understood and sympathized with him; and when she spoke to him of the difficulty of walking, how the groping foot first seeks the ground before the muscles are straightened to take a step, the blind man asked, with surprise:
"And how do you know that?" He again stretched out his head and bent it back in the same unpleasant manner as before.
"I once knew a blind man who told me. It is terrible to think that you're obliged to depend upon a stranger. Blind Gloster implores his guide not to forsake him."
"Maiden! Who are you? Was it you who spoke? It was your voice--or is there some one with you? How do you know that?"
"I read it once," said Irma, biting her lips till the blood almost came. "I read it once," she repeated, forcing herself to use the dialect again.
The blind man's head bent low and he held his hands between his knees. A convulsive movement passed over his fine youthful features, as if tears were ineffectually struggling to escape. He leaned his head back against the wall, and at last said: