to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face,
your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . . . .
It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to
you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you,
and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and
stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your
imaginations stoop . . . _No_; _you_ would not have me do that?"

A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left
the thing a question.

"I wish," she said, "sometimes--" She paused.

"Yes?" he said, a little apprehensively.

"I wish sometimes--you would not talk like that."

"Like what?"

"I know it's pretty--it's your imagination. I love it, but _now_--"

He felt cold. "_Now?_" he said, faintly.

She sat quite still.

"You mean--you think--I should be better, better perhaps--"

He was realising things very swiftly. He felt anger perhaps,
anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of
understanding--a sympathy near akin to pity.

"_Dear_," he said, and he could see by her whiteness how
tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say.
He put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a
time in silence.

"If I were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voice
that was very gentle.

She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "Oh, if you
would," she sobbed, "if only you would!"

For a week before the operation that was to raise him from his
servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nunez
knew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm, sunlit hours,
while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wandered
aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. He had
given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was not
sure. And at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour
over the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him.
He had a few minutes with Medina-sarote before she went apart to
sleep.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall see no more."

"Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her
strength.

"They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going
through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for
_me_ . . . . Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, I
will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice,
I will repay."

He was drenched in pity for