Once and again—just as I have seen a blackbird drop plumb from the upper boughs of a tree on a worm disporting itself in the dewy mould—once I did ask a question which produced in her one of those curious reactions which made her, rather than immaterial, an exceedingly vigilant image of her very self. "What will you do, Fanny, when you can't mock at him?"
"Him?" she inquired in a breath.
"The him!" I said.
"What him?" she replied.
"Well," I said, stumbling along down what was a rather black and unfamiliar alley to me, "my father was not, I suppose, particularly wise in anything, but my mother loved him very much."
"And my father," she retorted, in words so carefully pronounced that I knew they must be dangerous, "my father was a first mate in the mercantile marine when he married your landlady."
"Well," I repeated, "what would you do, if—if you fell in love?"
Fanny sat quite still, all the light at the window gently beating on her face, with its half-closed eyes. Her foot stirred, and with an almost imperceptible movement of her shoulder, she replied, "I shall go blind."
I looked at her, dumbfounded. All the days of her company were shrivelled up in that small sentence. "Oh, Fanny," I whispered hopelessly, "then you know?"
"'Know'?" echoed the smooth lips.