the visit to him of
her new-made friend Gwen may go off well, and steer clear of the
ambushes that beset it. Better that that visit should never come off,
than that her friend should be left to share their fears for the future.
Each is hiding from the other a weakening confidence in the renewal of
suspended eyesight, weaker at the outset than either had been prepared
to admit to the other.

"Look here, 'Rene," says Adrian, an hour later, during which his sister
has read aloud to him, lying by the open window. "Never mind Becky
Sharp; she'll keep till the evening. Can we see Arthur's Bridge from
this window, where I saw your friend Lady Gwen? It was Arthur's, wasn't
it? What Arthur? King Arthur?"

"Yes, if you like. Only don't go and call it Asses' Bridge, as you did
the other day--not when the family's here. It sounds disrespectful."

"Not a bit. It only looks as if Euclid had been round. But answer my
question.... Oh, we _can_ see it! Very well, then; show me which way it
lies. Is it visible--the actual bridge itself, I mean--not the place
it's in?"

Irene got up and looked out of the window from behind her brother's
chair. "Yes," she said. "One sees the stone arch plain. How can I show
you?" She took his head in her hands again to guide it to a true line of
sight.

"Between us and the sunset?"

"Thereabouts. Rather on the left."

"Very good. Now we can go on with Becky Sharp."

"That's it, my lord, is it? Where was I?--oh, Sir Pitt Crawley...." And
then the reading was continued, till tea portended, and Irene went away
to capture her visitors.

All the sting of his darkness came upon him in its fulness as he heard
that voice on the stairs. Oh, could he but see her for one moment--only
one moment--to be sure that that dazzling image of three weeks since was
not a mere imagination! He knew well the enchantment of the rainbow
gleam on sea and earth and sky--the glory that makes Aladdin's palace of
the merest hovel. He could scarcely have said to a nicety why a
self-deception on this score seemed to him fraught with such evil. If it
was a terror on Gwen's behalf, that a false image cherished through a
period of reviving eyesight should in the end prove an injustice to her,
and cast a chill over his own passionate admiration--for it was that at
least that a chance of five minutes had enthralled him with--he banished
that terror artificially from his mind. What could it matter to _her_,
if he _was_ taken aback a