“I am hurt, but not angry.”
“What have I done?—or is it I?”
“It is not you. You are very good. It is nobody but God. I am hurt, because He is angry, perhaps.”
“Tell me what is the matter. Look at me.” He faced her now-faced her eyes, looking blindly straight before her.
“Hugh,” she said, and she put her hand out slightly, not exactly to him, but as if to protect him from the blow which she herself must deal: “I am looking at you now.”
“Yes, yes, but so strangely, and not in my eyes.”
“I cannot look into your eyes, because, Hugh, I am blind.” Her hand went further out towards him.
He took it silently and pressed it to his bosom as he saw that she spoke true; and the shadow of the thing fell on him. The hand held to his breast felt how he was trembling from the shock.
“Sit down, Hugh,” she said, “and I will tell you all; but do not hold my hand so, or I cannot.”
Sitting there face to face, with deep furrows growing in his countenance, and a quiet sorrow spreading upon her cheek and forehead, she told the story how, since her childhood, her sight had played her false now and then, and within the past month had grown steadily uncertain. “And now,” she said at last, “I am blind. I think I should like to tell my father—if you please. Then when I have seen him and poor Angers, if you will come again! There is work to be done. I hoped it would be finished before this came; but—there, good friend, go; I will sit here quietly.”