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‘That’s nonsense,’ he said.

Maurice again straightened himself, leaving the cat.

‘There’s no telling,’ he said. Then again, in an odd tone, he added: ‘I don’t really know you, do I?’

‘Probably not,’ said Bertie.

‘Do you mind if I touch you?’

The lawyer shrank away instinctively. And yet, out of very philanthropy, he said, in a small voice: ‘Not at all.’

But he suffered as the blind man stretched out a strong, naked hand to him. Maurice accidentally knocked off Bertie’s hat.

‘I thought you were taller,’ he said, starting. Then he laid his hand on Bertie Reid’s head, closing the dome of the skull in a soft, firm grasp, gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.

‘You seem young,’ he said quietly, at last.

The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.

‘Your head seems tender, as if you were young,’ Maurice repeated. ‘So do your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?–touch my scar.’

Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.

Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow, and stood holding it in his own.

‘Oh, my God’ he said, ‘we shall know each other now, shan’t we? We shall know each other now.’

Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear, lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship. Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship which Bertie shrank from most.

‘We’re all right together now, aren’t we?’ said Maurice. ‘It’s all right now, as long as we live, so far as we’re concerned?’

‘Yes,’ said Bertie, trying by any means to escape.

Maurice stood with head lifted, as if listening. The new delicate fulfilment of mortal friendship had come as a revelation and surprise to him, something exquisite and unhoped-for. He seemed to be listening to hear if it were real.

Then he turned for his coat.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘we’ll go to Isabel.’

Bertie took the lantern and opened the door. The cat disappeared. The two men went in silence along the causeways. Isabel, as they came, thought their footsteps sounded strange. She looked up pathetically and anxiously for their entrance. There seemed a curious elation about Maurice. Bertie was haggard, with sunken eyes.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘We’ve become friends,’ said Maurice, standing with his feet apart, like a strange colossus.

‘Friends!’ re-echoed Isabel. And she looked again at Bertie. He met her eyes with a furtive, haggard look; his eyes were as if glazed with misery.

‘I’m so glad,’ she said, in sheer perplexity.

‘Yes,’ said Maurice.

He was indeed so glad. Isabel took his hand with both hers, and held it fast.

‘You’ll be happier now, dear,’ she said.

But she was watching Bertie. She knew that he had one desire–to escape from this intimacy, this friendship, which had been thrust upon him. He could not bear it that he had been touched by the blind man, his insane reserve broken in. He was like a mollusk whose shell is broken.