Deirdre pressed her heels into the chestnut: she and the horse disappeared among the trees.
She talked of Mrs. Cameron to her father.
"It would break your heart to see the change in her," she said.
"But I can't see her any more," he said brusquely.
Deirdre realised the wound that she had opened. She had never quite forgiven Davey's mother for the fact that Dan had lost his sight on her account. Mrs. Cameron never seemed to realise it and that had angered the girl. Perhaps Mrs. Cameron did not know what the Schoolmaster had done for her, Deirdre told herself sometimes. But Davey knew and she could hardly believe that Mrs. Cameron was ignorant, though she never seemed to take the Schoolmaster's injury as a personal matter.
Deirdre looked down on his face, dark and sombre now. Scarcely anything of its old reckless gaiety was left. Lines had been carved on it by bitter thought and brooding on the utter night he was travelling into.
She rubbed her soft cheek against his.
"Tell me," he said, with an effort, "how she looks, Deirdre."
"She looks," the girl said hesitatingly. "She looks—I can't explain how—as if something that burned inside of her had gone out."
"But she's beautiful—like she used to be," he begged. "She used to have a way of looking at you that I never saw with anybody else—"