cause
she pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you without
seeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face make
her turn away from you?"

But Hollister could not explain his feeling, his deep dread of that
which seemed no remote possibility but something inevitable and very
near at hand. He did not want pity. He did not want to be merely
endured. He sat silent, thinking of those things, inwardly protesting
against this miraculous recovery of sight which meant so great a boon
to his wife and contained such fearful possibilities of misery for
himself.

Myra rose. "I'll come again and straighten up in a day or two."

She turned back at the foot of the steps.

"Robin," she said, with a wistful, uncertain smile, "if Doris _does_
will you let me help you pick up the pieces?"

Hollister stared at her a second.

"God God!" he broke out. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Perfectly."

"You're a strange woman."

"Yes, I suppose I am," she returned. "But my strangeness is only an
acceptance, as a natural fact, of instincts and cravings and desires
that women are taught to repress. If I find that I've gone swinging
around an emotional circle and come back to the point, or the man,
where I started, why should I shrink from that, or from admitting
it--or from acting on it if it seemed good to me?"

She came back to where Hollister sat on the steps. She put her hand on
his knee, looked searchingly into his face. Her pansy-blue eyes met
his steadily. The expression in them stirred Hollister.

"Mind you, Robin, I don't think your Doris is superficial enough to be
repelled by a facial disfigurement. She seems instinctively to know
and feel and understand so many things that I've only learned by
bitter experience. She would never have made the mistakes I've made. I
don't think your face will make you any the less her man. But if it
does--I was your first woman. I did love you, Robin. I could again. I
could creep back into your arms if they were empty, and be glad. Would
it seem strange?"

And still Hollister stared dumbly. He heard her with a little rancor,
a strange sense of the futility of what she said. Why hadn't she
acquired this knowledge of herself long ago? It was too late now. The
old fires were dead. But if the new one he had kindled to warm himself
were to be extinguished, could he go back and bask in the warmth that
smoldered in this woman's eyes? He wondered. And he felt a faint