ittle doubt that
she has a rather unusual form of lamellar cataract."

"Curable?" motioned Coursay.

"I haven't examined her; how could I-- But--I'm going to do it."

"And if you operate?" asked Coursay, hopefully.

"Operate? Yes--yes, of course. It is needling, you know, with
probability of repetition. We expect absorption to do the work for
us--bar accidents and other things."

"When will you operate?" inquired Coursay.

Lansing broke out, harshly: "God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her a
prisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munn
refused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayer
for years--the miserable mountebank!"

"You mean that he won't let you try to help her?"

"I mean just exactly that, Jack."

Coursay got up with his clinched hands swinging and his eager face red
as a pippin. "Why, then," he said, "we'll go and get her! Come on; I
can't sit here and let such things happen!"

Lansing laughed the laugh of a school-boy bent on deviltry.

"Good old Jack! That's the sort of advice I wanted," he said,
affectionately. "We may see our names in the morning papers for this;
but who cares? We may be arrested for a few unimportant and absurd
things--but who cares? Munn will probably sue us; who cares? At any
rate, we're reasonably certain of a double-leaded column in the yellow
press; but do you give a tinker's damn?"

"Not one!" said Coursay, calmly.

Then they went down to dinner.

Sprowl, being unwell, dined in his own rooms; Agatha Sprowl was more
witty and brilliant and charming than ever; but Coursay did not join her
on the veranda that evening, and she sat for two hours enduring the
platitudes of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, and planning serious
troubles for Lansing, to whose interference she attributed Coursay's
non-appearance.

But Coursay and Lansing had other business in hand that night. Fortune,
too, favored them when they arrived at the O'Hara house; for there,
leaning on the decaying gate, stood Eileen O'Hara, her face raised to
the sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon her
lids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes.

She was alone; she heard Lansing's step, and knew it, too. From within
the house came the deadened sound of women's voices singing:

"Light of the earth and sky,
Unbind mine eyes,
Lest I in darkness lie
While my soul dies.
Blind, at Thy feet I fall,