"I've been thinking," he said, "of the men blinded in the war. They have always been on my mind, but I never had a chance to help. Losing limbs is a disaster of a totally different kind; it's a bore, of course, to have a wooden leg, and be unable to join in sports any more, and so on; but it's nothing to squeal about. Whereas losing sight—that's terrible.
"I should doubt if any quarrel between nations is worth such a price as one blinded man.
"Sight is too glorious a possession. I have been shutting my eyes at intervals all the morning and realizing what it must be like never to open them again.
"'Never'—that is the appalling word.
"I don't mean only what every one who cares anything for the beauty of nature would miss—the first primrose, the new moon, a starry night, a yacht race, snow on the trees. Those are the obvious things and probably many a soldier had thought little enough about them. But put yourself in the position of a blinded soldier and think of his loss. The pretty girls, for example. That must be a loss indeed—the faces and figures of the pretty girls. You know how soldiers in their shirt-sleeves lean on the sills of barrack windows and compare notes on the girls who pass? Not too edifying perhaps, but think of the poor devils who can do this no more.
"And games—never to see another football match, another cricket match. I have seen blind men led into Lord's and watched their poor baulked faces as the sound of the bat against the ball is heard and the crowd cheers a boundary hit. They like to be there—they have the sense of still being in it; they can't bear not to participate in life—but the loss!
"I have seen them in theatres and music halls too, often; and there the spoken word still has its message; but oh, their baffled look when the laughter depends upon gesture!
"And then think of what blindness must mean to those who have loved pictures. The sense of touch, intensely developed, may reveal much, and certainly the beauty of shape, but it can convey no idea of colour. Finger tips passing over the surface of a Corot learn nothing of its beauty; the National Gallery for ever more is blotted out."
Patrick paused and blushed.