"Yes! Then surely you will not go away. Because you have brought up a problem between you and me—— Aren't we big enough to fight that out between us? Ought we not? Give me my eyes! Give me my rights!
"Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just the other day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, I called out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me. I said No; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price. I said it would be sweeter to be blind and remain deceived. But that's gone by. I've been thinking since then. Now I want it all—all! I want all the fight of it, all the risk of it. Then, after I've taken my chance and made my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at the end! I want life! Don't you? I've always had the feeling that you were a strong man. I don't want anything I haven't earned. I'll never give what hasn't been earned. I won't ever pray for what isn't mine."
"Now I'm ready," she repeated simply. "I can't talk any more, and you mustn't. Good-by."
She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speak to his hand clasp. "At two!" was all he managed to say.
And so, in this far-off spot in the wilderness, the science of to-day, not long after two by the clock, had done what it might to remedy nature's unkindness, and to make Mary Gage as other women. When the sun had dropped back of its shielding mountain wall, Mary Gage lay still asleep, her eyes bandaged, in her darkened room. Whether at length she would awaken to darkness or to light, none could tell. Allen Barnes only knew that, tried as never he had been in all his life before, he had done his surgeon's work unfalteringly.
"Doc," said Sim Gage tremblingly, when they met upon the gravel street in the straggling little camp, each white-faced from fatigue, "tell me how long before we'll know."
"Three or four days at least. We'll have to wait."
"You're sure she'll see?"
"I hope so. I think so."
"What'll she see first?"