"It was—just a bayonet wound. You know how I was caught?"
"You were wounded before, weren't you? I heard you went down two or three times in the charge."
He rose slowly and stood before me.
"I've been invalided out, and yet nothing shows? Burgess thought I was a deserter, and the patriotic lady at Waterloo.... You see nothing wrong?"
I walked slowly round him.
"I may be blind, Raney——" I began.
His face twitched into a smile, and one hand shot out and closed over my wrist.
"Old man, you're almost as blind as I am!" he whispered. "Mind my hand, for God's sake! Yes, I told you at Chepstow we should have to risk everything we valued.... Both, yes.... Oh, stone-blind.... Old man, if—if I can stand it, you can too!"
* * * * * * * *
That night I sat up by myself waiting for my uncle to return. He was on duty till two, but I could not go to bed without seeing him. O'Rane had retired early in a state of complete exhaustion and dropped asleep almost as soon as he was between the sheets. He would—as ever—accept no assistance. I showed him his room, watched him touch his way round the walls and furniture and then left him. He rejoined me for a moment to complete his tour and find out where the bathroom lay, and we said good night a second time. A few moments later I strolled in to say I had given orders that he was not to be called. The room was in darkness when I entered, and he was unpacking his suitcase and arranging brushes and razors on the dressing-table. It may be to confess a want of imagination, but I think I realized then for the first time something of the meaning of blindness.