"How can you tell what sort of man I am?" Hollister inquired. "You just said that I was only a disembodied voice."
She laughed, a musical low-toned chuckle that pleased him.
"One gets impressions," she answered. "Being sightless sharpens other faculties. You often have very definite impressions in your mind about people you have never seen, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," he agreed. "I daresay every one gets such impressions."
"Sometimes one finds those impressions are merely verified by actual sight. So there you are. I get a certain impression of you by the language you use, your tone, your inflections—and by a something else which in those who can see is called intuition, for lack of something more definite in the way of a term."
"Aren't you ever mistaken in those impressionistic estimates of people?"
She hesitated a little.
"Sometimes—not often. That sounds egotistic, but really it is true."
The steamer drew out of the mouth of Toba Inlet. In the widening stretch between the mainland and the Redondas a cold wind came whistling out of Homfray Channel. Hollister felt the chill of it through his mackinaw coat and was moved to thought of his companion's comfort.