"There's something I want to ask you before you go," I continued.
He stopped, I with him, watching the suspicions pass across his face.
"Someone has told me----" I sought desperately, clumsily, for my satisfaction now. "Someone has told me that you have found the secret of perpetual motion. Is that true?"
The milk-white, sightless eyes rushed querulously to mine. All the expression of yearning to see seemed to lie hidden behind them. A flame that was not a flame--the ghost of a flame burnt there, intense with questioning. He could not see; I knew he could not see; yet those vacant globes of matter were charged with unerring perception. In that moment, his soul was looking into mine, searching it for integrity, scouring the very corners of it for the true reason of my question.
I met his gaze. It seemed then to me, that if I failed and my eyes fell before his, he would have weighed and found me wanting. It is one of the few things in this world which I count to my credit, that those empty sockets found me worthy of the trust.
"Who told ye that?" he asked.
I answered him truthfully that I did not know.
"But is it the case?" I added.
He shifted his position. I could see that he was listening.
"There is no one on the road," I said--"We are quite alone."