swered: "Yes. And yet
I told you I was not going far. And my friends in the neighbourhood
were Simpson and Margery, who aided and abetted. And it was true to say
I was going, for was I not going into darkness? and it is a different
world from the land of light."

"Ah, how true that is!" cried Garth. "And how difficult to make people
understand the loneliness of it, and how they seem suddenly to arrive
close to one from another world; stooping from some distant planet,
with sympathetic voice and friendly touch; and then away they go to
another sphere, leaving one to the immensity of solitude in Sightless
Land."

"Yes," agreed Nurse Rosemary, "and you almost dread the coming, because
the going makes the darkness darker, and the loneliness more lonely."

"Ah, so YOU experienced that?" said Garth. "Do you know, now you have
week-ended in Sightless Land, I shall not feel it such a place of
solitude. At every turn I shall be able to say:--'A dear and faithful
friend has been here.'"

He laughed a laugh of such almost boyish pleasure, that all the mother
in Jane's love rose up and demanded of her one supreme effort. She
looked at the slight figure in white flannels, leaning against the
window frame, so manly, so beautiful still, and yet so helpless and so
needing the wealth of tenderness which was hers to give. Then, standing
facing him, she opened her arms, as if the great preparedness of that
place of rest, so close to him must, magnet-like, draw him to her; and
standing thus in the sunlight, Jane spoke.

Was she beautiful? Was she paintable? Would a man grow weary of such a
look turned on him, of such arms held out? Alas! Too late! On that
point no lover shall ever be able to pass judgment. That look is for
one man alone. He only will ever bring it to that loving face. And he
cannot pronounce upon its beauty in voice of rapturous content. He
cannot judge. He cannot see. He is blind!

"Mr. Dalmain, there are many smaller details; but before we talk of
those I want to tell you the greatest of all the lessons I learned in
Sightless Land." Then, conscious that her emotion was producing in her
voice a resonant depth which might remind him too vividly of notes in
The Rosary, she paused, and resumed in the high, soft edition of her
own voice which it had become second nature to her to use as Nurse
Rosemary: "Mr. Dalmain, it seems to me I learned to understand how that
which is loneliness unspeakable to ONE might be Paradise