Still the trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat. He endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last. "You'd be perfect then—as lovely as ever any woman—why, you're perfect now! And yet without that one flaw where would you be? You'd not be married then, though you are now."
"Go on!" she said at length, coldly.
"You don't know one of us here except that girl, Annie, as different from you as night is from day. You don't know about the rest of us. You only think about us, imagine us—you don't see us, don't know us. Ah, God! If you only could! But—if you did!"
The last words broke from him unconsciously. He sat chilled with horror at his own speech, but knew he had to go on.
"I am going to do what shall leave us both unhappy as long as we live. I'll give you back your eyes if I can."
"I am helpless." She spoke simply.
"Yes! Why, if I even look at you, I feel I'm an eavesdropper, I'm stealing. You can't see in my face what your face puts there—you can't see my eyes with yours. You can't understand how you've made me know things I never did know until I saw you. Why, cruel? yes! And now you're asking me to be still more cruel. And I'm going to be."
"Don't!" she broke out. "Oh, God! Don't! Please—you must not talk. I thought you were different from this."
"And yet you have asked me a dozen times what's wrong here. Why, everything's wrong! That man loves you because he can see you—any man would—but you don't love him, because you haven't seen him. You're not a woman to him at all, but an abstraction. He's not a man to you at all, but an imagination. That's not love of man and woman. But when you have back your eyes,—then you're in shape to compete with the best women in the world for the best man in the world. That's love! That's marriage! That's right! Nothing else is."
He paused horrified. Her voice was icy. "I asked you what was wrong here. I begin to see now. You spoke the truth—everything is wrong."