“Yet don’t,” I returned, “see too much. We can do more.”
“Than Nina?” She was again on the spot. “It wouldn’t after all be difficult. We only want the directly opposite thing—and which is the only one the poor dear can give. Unless indeed,” she suggested, “we simply retract—we back out.”
I turned it over. “It’s too late for that. Whether Mrs. Brash’s peace is gone I can’t say. But Nina’s is.”
“Yes, and there’s no way to bring it back that won’t sacrifice her friend. We can’t turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? But fancy Nina’s not having seen!” Mrs. Munden exclaimed.
“She doesn’t see now,” I answered. “She can’t, I’m certain, make out what we mean. The woman, for her still, is just what she always was. But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was to see the attention of the world deviate.”
“All the same I don’t think, you know,” my interlocutress said, “that Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she’ll ever make her one. That isn’t the way it will happen, for she’s exactly as conscientious as Mrs. Brash.”
“Then what is the way?” I asked.
“It will just happen in silence.”
“And what will ‘it,’ as you call it, be?”
“Isn’t that what we want really to see?”