The End of the Journey
A LITTLE interval of time elapsed.
Her first exquisite sense of the recognition by touch had passed away. Her mind had recovered its balance. She separated herself from Oscar, and turned to me, with the one inevitable question which I knew must follow the joining of their hands.
"What does it mean?"
The exposure of Nugent's perfidy; the revelation of the fatal secret of Oscar's face; and, last not least, the defence of my own conduct towards her, were all comprehended in the answer for which that question called. As carefully, as delicately, as mercifully as I could, I disclosed to her the whole truth. How the shock affected her, she did not tell me at the time, and has never told me since. With her hand in Oscar's hand, with her face hidden on Oscar's breast, she listened; not once interrupting me, from first to last, by so much as a single word. Now and then, I saw her tremble; now and then I heard her sigh heavily. That was all. It was only when I had ended—it was only after a long interval during which Oscar and I watched her in speechless anxiety—that she slowly lifted her head and broke the silence.
"Thank God," we heard her say to herself fervently—"Thank God, I am blind."
Those were her first words. They filled me with horror. I cried out to her to recall them.
She quietly laid her head back on Oscar's breast.
"Why should I recall them?" she asked. "Do you think I wish to see him disfigured as he is now? No! I wish to see him—and I do see him!—as my fancy drew his picture in the first days of our love. My blindness is my blessing. It has given me back my old delightful sensation when I touch him; it keeps my own beloved image of him—the one image I care for—unchanged and unchangeable. You will persist in thinking that my happiness depends on my sight. I look back with horror at what I suffered when I had my sight—my one effort is to forget that miserable time. Oh, how little you know of me! Oh, what a shock it would be to me, if I saw him as you see him! Try to understand me, and you won't talk of my loss—you will talk of my gain."
"Your gain?" I repeated. "What have you gained?"