She did not finish her sentence, and after a moment's silence Keith began again to speak.
"I've been talking a little to David Patch—the superintendent, you know. We're going to take the whole house where we are, for our work, pretty quick, and when we do, Patch and his wife will come there to live upstairs; and they'll take me to board. I asked them. Then I'll be right there handy all the time, you see, which will be a fine arrangement all around."
"A fine arrangement, indeed—with you 'way off down there, an' livin' with David Patch!"
"But, Susan," argued Keith, a bit wearily, "I couldn't be living here, you know."
"I should like to know why not."
"Because I—couldn't." He had grown very white now. "Besides, I—I think they would be happier without me here; and I know—I should be." His voice was low and almost indistinct, but Susan heard—and understood. "The very fact that once I—I thought—that I was foolish enough to think—But, of course, as soon as I remembered my blindness—And to tie a beautiful young girl down to—" He stopped short and pulled himself up. "Susan, are you still there?"
"I'm right here, Keith." Susan spoke constrainedly.
He gave an embarrassed laugh. A painful red had suffused his face.
"I'm afraid I got to talking—and forgetting that I wasn't—alone," he stumbled on hurriedly. "I—I meant to go on to say that I hoped they'd be very happy. Dad deserves it; and—and if they'd only hurry up and get it over with, it—it would be easier—for me. Not that it matters, of course. Dad has had an awful lot to put up with me already, as it is, you know—the trouble, the care, and the disappointment. You see, I—I was going to make up to him for all he had lost. I was going to be Jerry and Ned and myself, all in a bunch. And now to turn out to be nothing—and worse than nothing——"
"Keith Burton, you stop!" It was the old imperious Susan back again. "You stop right where you be. An' don't you never let me hear you say another word about your bein' a disappointment. Jerry an' Ned, indeed! I wonder if you think a dozen Jerrys an' Neds could do what you've done! An' no matter what they done, they couldn't have done a bigger, splendider thing than you've done in triumphating over your blindness the way you've done, nor one that would make your father prouder of you! An' let me tell you another thing, Keith Burton. No matter what you done—no matter how many big pictures you painted, or big books you wrote, or how much money you made for your dad; there ain't anything you could've done that would do him so much solid good as what you have done."