"Well—just a crack," conceded Flame.
It was astonishing how a man as broad-shouldered as the Lay Reader could pass so easily through a crack.
Conscience-stricken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked across her forehead.
"Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried.
"Well, really," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to be ordinarily bright—I had never suspected myself of being actually dazzling."
"Oh, you're not bright at all," protested Flame. "It's just my promise.—I promised Mother not to see you!"
"Not to see me?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the difficulty. "Why—why we might tie my big handkerchief across your eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened out.—Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain righteousness in—that!"
"What a splendid idea!" capitulated Flame. "But, of course, if I'm absolutely blindfolded," she wavered for a second only, "you'll have to lead me by the hand."
"I could do that," admitted the Lay Reader.
With the big white handkerchief once tied firmly across her eyes, Flame's last scruple vanished.