When the blind man recognized Odette's voice his whole face was transfigured. He turned pale; he hardly had courage to speak. But she felt the effort with which his closed eyelids were directed toward the point in space from which her voice had come; her perfume had been wafted to him. This blinded man was looking at her, was seeing her in his imagination; perhaps he was seeing her much more beautiful, more alluring, than he had dreamed! He had been disturbed because opportunities to be with her had no longer been afforded him, and he did not know that it was not she herself who had prevented them. But an inward instinct, stronger than he had yet known, filled him with ecstasy in that moment of the young woman's presence. He inhaled her like a flower, he listened to her, was saturated with her. Believing himself to be behind the veil which hid the daylight from him, as behind a screen, he neglected to keep a watch on himself, to impose constraint upon himself. His emotion was evident to those who saw him, and the agitation of a man so much to be pitied impressed her profoundly.
Odette told him that she had learned that he had two little children. Then the blinded man extended his hand to her; his throat contracted; he could not utter a word. Without hesitation Odette took the hand of this man, so good-hearted and so wretched, and let her own be enfolded in his. Not a word had been added to those alluding to the children, yet she felt that she had never heard from human lips such an expression of gratitude.
*
* *
They were there, under the trees of the Square of the United States, one of the beauty spots of opulent, worldly Paris, where so many conventional words and actions must have been exchanged; and this agitated silence, those clasped hands, result of the universal woe, seemed to embody as in marble the symbol of a new beauty which effaced all that had before been known.
As the blind man made a motion to relinquish her hand, Odette said:
"Au revoir, messieurs"; and left them. The blind man remained motionless, either because he could not think it possible that she should go, or because he waited for his friend, who hesitated to urge him to leave the place.
*
* *
Odette did not go up to Clotilde, even at the risk of permitting her lack of protestation to be accepted as acquiescence. She felt herself incapable of talking with any one whose heart was not overflowing. She did not disdain the sight of her flowers, her preoccupation with personal pleasures; she would despise nothing, these were tastes which inspired her rather with pity. Toward those who have greatly suffered it was not pity that she felt, but attraction; an irresistible attraction.
*
* *
She was soon joined by one who greeted her. It was La Villaumer, returning from a visit to a sick man in the Rue Bizet. He turned toward the two men who were going away and asked Odette: