“‘You are the chief sufferer,’ said I. ‘My sympathy is for you. I did not mean to destroy your faith in the ethics of this thing. Personally, for your own good, I would advise you to get overboard, and if you wish I will lead you to the rail. I have been truthfully answering the questions which you asked me concerning your wife....’
“We were both silent for many minutes.”
“‘I begin to see it now, I begin to see it ... you are right....’ And then, Doctor, as he looked down the long, dark, narrow corridor stretching away into the years of obscurity before him the shadow fell across his soul and I left him writhing beneath the weight of his doom.”
Leyden paused and turned his pale, classic face toward the liquid darkness of the star-flecked sky. “... See all of those planets, Doctor,” he mused, “and think of what the sight of just one of them would mean to a blind man ... a single break in the utter obliteration of a sense ... a pin-prick in the curtain.... I once witnessed an operation which restored to a blind man the perception of light alone ... no vision, only light ... and he would place his hands over his eyes and then take them away and laugh with the joy of a heart too full for utterance. Think of the myriad things we see which go to waste! My word, it makes one wish to treasure the image of each passing object....”
“And now, Doctor, I will tell you the rest, and then you shall tell me if I was a fool to answer him so truthfully; in my own mind I have never been quite sure.
“Three days saw the end of his period of frantic and agonized depression, for his stoicism and self-control abandoned him as soon as I removed the balm of a voluntary death. In this time he would see none of us; would eat because he had determined to live; but one could see that a word of comfort, of sympathy, would be infuriating. Next came a week of apathy while the wound was granulating ... inside and out. What is it, Doctor, which regulates the duration of violent pain when its cause still persists? In the case of this newly blinded man, with his high vitality and potent perceptions, one could not conceive of such a thing as reconciliation, nor did it arrive as such....”
“The first inkling I had of the change was while we were going down the Red Sea. I had gone to pay my usual afternoon visit; one of the mess boys was coming from Dalton’s room, and as he stepped into the corridor I heard Dalton’s voice say peevishly:
“‘Be sure to get it well done and plenty of gravy ... do you hear, plenty of gravy.’
“Ach! For no reason the words shocked me more than when he had told me of his wish to die! Plenty of gravy...! What could it matter to a man newly blind if his gravy were of gall and wormwood? What could it matter?”
“Dalton had before this time recovered from the physical effects of the shock; the epidermis of his face had not been deeply burned; the danger to his eyes was due to the fact that the irritation of the caustic had involuntarily forced him to hold the lids shut, thus causing the stuff to burn the more deeply. His face had been blistered as it might from any burn and the new skin had formed beneath, and at this time the bandages were off and the only evidence of the accident was in the pellucid film drawn across his pupils. He wore dark glasses to prevent the irritant action of the light.