"Keith."
"Yes, dear."
"I confessed mine, and yours can't be any harder than—mine was."
Still he hesitated; then, with a long breath he began to speak.
"Dorothy, it—it's just that I've had so much to fight. And—it hasn't been easy. But, listen, dear. I think I've loved you from away back in the days when you wore your hair in two thick pigtails down your back. You know I was only fourteen when—when the shadows began to come. One day, away back then, I saw you shudder once at—blindness. We were talking about old Joe Harrington. And I never forgot it."
"But it was only because I pitied him."
"Yes; but I thought then that it was more aversion. You said you couldn't bear to look at them. And you see I feared, even then, that I was going to be like old Joe some time."
"Oh, Keith!"
"Well, it came. I was like old Joe—blind. And I knew that I was the object of curiosity and pity, and, I believed, aversion, wherever I went. And, oh, I so hated it! I didn't want to be stared at, and pointed out, and pitied. I didn't want to be different. And above all I didn't want to know that you were turning away from me in aversion and disgust."
"Oh, Keith, Keith, as if I ever could!" faltered the girl.