But, alack! the best-drawn plans, etc., and this plan was printed upon the stiffest of architect’s paper, and had been rolled tightly for several days: Forbes’ fingers were a trifle shaky for some reason; one edge of the outspread roll slipped from them and quick as a flash coiled up upon itself, sweeping his glasses from his nose and hurling them ten feet away, where they crashed upon a rock and shivered to atoms.
Now, if anyone reading this is solely and entirely dependent upon a pair of glasses to see anything ten inches beyond her own nose, she will understand how Forbes felt at that particular moment—maybe.
They bounded to their feet and inanely rushed for the wrecked glasses, knowing perfectly well that only bits of scattered crystal lay upon that merciless rock. Eleanor dropped upon her knees and began frantically to gather up the fragments, Forbes towering above her and blinking like an owl which has suddenly been routed out of a hollow tree into the glaring sunshine. A fragment, about two-thirds, of the lense of the right eye still held to the nose-clip. Eleanor pounced upon this, crying:
“Ah, here is a little piece, a very little piece! Do you think you can see with that? See just a little, little bit? Enough to look over the plans? I’ll read the specifications to you. I’ll do anything, anything to help you, I feel so terribly sorry. Let me be your eyes for just a little while, for I know how disappointed you must be,” and there was almost a sob in her voice as she rose to her feet and held the hopeless bit of eyeglass toward him.
He took it, deliberately opened the patent clip and as deliberately snapped it upon his nose, Eleanor watching him as though worlds trembled in the balance.
If half a loaf is better than no bread, I dare say two-thirds of an eyeglass are better than no eyeglass at all; and who in such a vital moment would have dared hint that Forbes looked slightly batty as he cocked one eye at the lady before him? Certainly not the lady, who was the very picture of Dolores at that instant. Then Forbes came to the front splendidly. Indeed, he came with a rush and a promptitude which no one could have foreseen; he made one step forward, and the next instant held the lady in his arms, as his words poured deliciously into the ear so near his lips:
“My eyes! My eyes! You shall be my eyes, my ears, my soul!—yes, my very body and boots. No! no! I don’t mean that! Oh, hang it all, what made me say that foolish thing? I mean you are my eyes and my very soul! Without your inspiration my very mind would be a blank. With you the dreams of my life will be crystallized into beautiful realities. Never, never shall I let you leave me! Never depart from your home until this one we have pictured and planned stands ready to receive you within its walls, to be its cherished, adored light; its inner shrine, at which I shall be the chief worshipper, my goddess of sweetness, light and intellect! My inspiration to ideals beyond man’s conception.”
But let us draw down that thick fir bough as a curtain.
Off yonder, upon a moss-covered stone, sat a little figure, hugging his knees and swaying backward and forward in an abandonment of hilarious mirth. At his feet lay a bow, beside him an empty quiver. On his wee nose the wreck of a pair of thick-lensed eyeglasses.