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It seemed to her that she sat there for hours, it was in reality minutes only. A firm step and the opening of a door roused her. She did not turn her head–what need? She knew the step. There was almost a touch of ironical smiling at her lips, as she thought how she must hear and feel things only, in the future. A voice said: “Marie, are you here?”

“I am here.”

“I’ll strike a match so that you can see I’m not a bushranger. There has been shooting in the grounds. Did you hear it?”

“Yes. A soldier firing at Carbourd.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes. He could not find the Cave. I directed him. Immediately after he was fired upon.”

“He can’t have been hit. There are no signs of him. There, that’s lighter and better, isn’t it?”

“I do not know.”

She had risen, but she did not turn towards him. He came nearer to her. The enigmatical tone struck him strangely, but he could find nothing less commonplace to say than: “You don’t prefer the exaggerated gloaming, do you?”

“No, I do not prefer the gloaming, but why should not one be patient?”

“Be patient!” he repeated, and came nearer still. “Are you hurt or angry?”

“I am hurt, but not angry.”

“What have I done?–or is it I?”

“It is not you. You are very good. It is nobody but God. I am hurt, because He is angry, perhaps.”

“Tell me what is the matter. Look at me.” He faced her now-faced her eyes, looking blindly straight before her.

“Hugh,” she said, and she put her hand out slightly, not exactly to him, but as if to protect him from the blow which she herself must deal: “I am looking at you now.”

“Yes, yes, but so strangely, and not in my eyes.”

“I cannot look into your eyes, because, Hugh, I am blind.” Her hand went further out towards him.

He took it silently and pressed it to his bosom as he saw that she spoke true; and the shadow of the thing fell on him. The hand held to his breast felt how he was trembling from the shock.

“Sit down, Hugh,” she said, “and I will tell you all; but do not hold my hand so, or I cannot.”

Sitting there face to face, with deep furrows growing in his countenance, and a quiet sorrow spreading upon her cheek and forehead, she told the story how, since her childhood, her sight had played her false now and then, and within the past month had grown steadily uncertain. “And now,” she said at last, “I am blind. I think I should like to tell my father–if you please. Then when I have seen him and poor Angers, if you will come again! There is work to be done. I hoped it would be finished before this came; but–there, good friend, go; I will sit here quietly.”

She could not see his face, but she heard him say: “My love, my love,” very softly, as he rose to go; and she smiled sadly to herself. She folded her hands in her lap, and thought, not bitterly, not listlessly, but deeply. She wanted to consider all cheerfully now; she tried to do so. She was musing among those flying perceptions, those nebulous facts of a new life, experienced for the first time; she was now not herself as she had been; another woman was born; and she was feeling carefully along the unfamiliar paths which she must tread. She was not glad that these words ran through her mind continuously at first:

“A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is darkness.”

Her brave nature rose against the moody spirit which sought to take possession of her, and she cried out in her heart valiantly: “But there is order, there is order. I shall feel things as they ought to be. I think I could tell now what was true and what was false in man or woman; it would be in their presence not in their faces.”