Chapter III.
Many times during their short engagement something almost compelled John Le Strange to paint a word picture of himself as he really was, not as he knew she believed him to be; but, after all, is it necessary? She loved him, and, God knows, he loved her! She would never look upon his face; always to her he would be beautiful. So far as utter affection could, he would keep all sorrow from her, surround her with every comfort. She was more helpless than most women; would need all her life more care and cherishing.
More than once he asked Mrs. Desmond if it would not be better to undeceive the girl. She, however, was emphatic in her negative.
“You’ll just spoil her life and her happiness if you do,” she answered. “What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve for; as every one knows, the blind in their hearts and souls worship at the shrine of beauty more ardently than those who see. To her you are all that is desirable in every way; let that content you.”
And so, with the truth still untold, the two married, and in the whole wide world there was no happier wife than Nora Le Strange. Never once did he let her feel her blindness; never did he tire of telling her of beautiful things, describing every place he took her to so vividly, with such care, that always she smiled and nodded as she pressed the hands she held.
“I see—I see it all quite plainly!” she would say. “Oh, John, what a beautiful place this world is! And what a pair of seeing eyes you lend to me!”
It was not until her little son was born that Nora craved passionately to see, if only for a moment. Time after time, as she held the little creature, as she passed her fingers ever so gently across his downy head, his tiny features, over and over again, John described just what the little one was like—the most beautiful baby in the world. But for once, she seemed hardly satisfied.
“Oh, if I could only see him!” she said; “just once. John, I’ve wanted terribly sometimes to see you, though I know just what you are like. I want even more to see him, because he’s you and me, and our dear love all rolled up in this sweet, warm bundle.”
It was just about this time that a stranger, meeting John, Nora and the beautiful child in a public conveyance, looked at the girl’s eyes with an interested, professional glance. A day later, having discovered where they lived, he called upon John Le Strange.
“Your wife is blind,” he said, after a preliminary word or two. “I think, however, she was not blind from birth?”