“Little fool!” she said very softly. “Little, wicked, wicked fool, Philippe cannot work—Philippe is blind.”
“No!” cried Fair. She clapped her hands over her ears, to shut out those dreadful words, her face a twisted mask of terror. “No, no, no!”
“And I tell you yes, yes, yes,” repeated the tall girl before her, closing her long fingers over the small wrists, wrenching the clinging hands down relentlessly. “Blind like a stone, I tell you—blind.”
“He couldn’t be—he couldn’t be—I’d have seen——”
“What have you ever seen that did not touch yourself?” asked Philippe’s sister. “He is blind, but not so blind as you. When you came to us, never, never did we think that you would not see, though we could not talk of it—not yet. But Philippe—Philippe he said: ‘No, no—let her alone. She has need of peace and mirth and sunshine, those doctors said—darkness it must not touch her. We will be careful, and perhaps she will not know.’ You have well repaid that care, have you not, Fairfax?”
“But his eyes—his eyes——”
“His eyes—because they are still there, you think they see? They saw too much, those eyes; they see no more. What made the light behind them—that nerve behind them—it is paralyzed. You who know so much about the war, you do not know that shock could do that? That there are men blind because their eyes turned rebel, and they would see no more horror—deaf because they would not hear more horror—dumb because they could not tell their horror. Philippe—Philippe he loved beauty—and after a long while his eyes they went mad—and he is blind. Work—work, you little fool! All day, all night, he works, he works. To learn to read—to learn to write—to learn to live, to live, you hear——”
“Please let me go, Laure,” whispered Fair. “Please, Laure—please, Laure.”
“I will tell Marie Léontine to help you with your packing,” said Laure. “And I am glad indeed to let you go. Come, André.”
Fair watched them cutting across the garden to the east entrance—not the terrace, not the terrace. She couldn’t run any more—she felt as though she could never run again—but perhaps if she started now and went very carefully, holding to the lime trees, she could get there before he left. She must, she must get there before he left.... Not until she was at the steps did she dare to raise her eyes. He was still there.