He talked freely, almost gayly, though with an evident effort. He appeared to be intelligent without ever having been cultivated; but neither his person nor his mind revealed anything remarkable. He would doubtless have been a man like any other if he had not been blinded.
Odette shuddered on looking at those closed eyelids on the face of a man in whom one divined, notwithstanding his effort to conceal it, a secret suffering. Yet his voice was not that of a man who bore a mystery about with him; his suffering probably did not attain to those higher regions which a rich imagination transforms into torture-chambers for men unhappily deprived of the light of day; he did not dream of romantic sunsets, of the contemplation of the celestial vault, or of Correggio's sunlight, nor even of the beauty of houris.
As George was offering to his touch the cigars in a box, he whispered in his ear:
"You have been lunching with a pretty-woman, old fellow, don't you know?"
"Your wife? I should think so!"
"My wife, yes, but the other one, young, very pretty!"
The blind man seemed to reflect, shook his head and said:
"That always gives pleasure."
"Her husband," George went on, "was killed in the early days——"
"Has she children?" asked the blinded man.