“You make me feel quite frightened, Hebe,” he said. “What is this mysterious trouble?”
To his distress Hebe—happy Hebe—gave a little gasp that was almost like a sob.
“Archie,” she said, “it is a very great trouble that has come upon me, or rather upon us, for I am sure it is quite as bad or worse for Norman. Do you know there have been, there still are, grave fears that I am going blind? That is what I have been at Coblenz for. You know there is a very great oculist there.”
Archie’s bright, sunburnt face had paled visibly.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “My poor child—my dear little Hebe. It can’t be true; those specialists are always alarmists as well.”
“No,” she said. “I will tell you all about it, for I quite understand. They’ve not hidden anything from me. My guardian has been very kind, and Josephine—I did not think there was so much tenderness in her. It is not hopeless. It has come on gradually. But till this summer I did not realise it at all; I have always been so strong and well, you know, in every way. Then the glare and the heat of London seemed to make it worse suddenly. I began to think it must be something more serious than short-sightedness.”
“You never were short-sighted,” Archie interrupted. “You had splendid sight.”
And indeed, as he looked at her eyes now, deep and lustrous, but with a sadness in their brown depths which he had never seen there before, it was difficult to believe that there could be anything wrong.
“Yes,” she agreed; “but for some time I have not seen so well, and I got in the way of thinking I must be short-sighted. But this summer pain began, very bad sometimes, and then we consulted our doctor, and he sent me to Coblenz.”
“And the opinion you got there was?—”