Great drops of sweat stood on Jeremy's brow.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She can't see. The eye is injured. Yesterday, save for the crystalline lens which I extracted, it was as sound as mine or yours."
"I was afraid something had happened," said Barbara in a matter-of-fact tone. "Baby was restive in the night and pushed his little fist into my eye."
"Good heavens, madam!" exclaimed the angry surgeon, "you don't mean to say that you took a young baby to sleep with you in your condition?"
Barbara nodded, as if found out in a trifling peccadillo. "I suppose I'm blind for ever?" she asked casually.
He examined the eye again. There was a moment's dead silence. Jeremy, white-lipped and haggard, hung on the verdict. Then Hattaway rose, extended his arms and let them drop helplessly against his sides.
"Yes," said he. "The sight is gone."
Jeremy put his hands to his head, staggered, and, overcome by the reaction from the terror and the shock of the unlooked-for calamity, fell in a faint on the floor.
After he had recovered and the surgeon had gone, promising to send his apprentice the next day to dress the eyes, which, for fear of inflammation, still needed tending, Jeremy sat by his wife's bedside with an aching heart.