o a new photograph on his mantel--of a pretty
laughing-eyed young woman playing with a sailor-suited cherub. The
young woman, she knew must be the wife of whom he never spoke.

"You are very pretty," she would whisper. "Why do you stay away from
him? Don't you know he is lonely, with no one to cheer him up but a
funny little man--and me? You're the reason he gave up his own work."

She tried not to be prejudiced against Mrs. David Quentin. But she had
a burning curiosity, which is a weakness of all women--and men.

She mentioned the picture one evening, very casually.

"This is your family, is it not?"

"Yes," he said in a queer curt tone she had never heard him use.

"She is very pretty, isn't she?"

"Yes. They are--spending the summer at an aunt's."

"What a darling little boy!" she said.

Soon after she left, thinking, "I wonder _why_ she is away from him?
It isn't a happy reason, I'm sure. . . . _I_ wouldn't stay away from
him."

David was thinking much the same thing. The next day the picture was
nowhere in evidence.

When he went down-stairs one evening to tell her the plans were
complete, she dissembled her excitement and said, "Now you'll be able
to get enough sleep." But when, after a few minutes of gay nonsense,
he had left her to take her advice, and she thought what success would
mean to him, she became very grave and had her first taste of a
suspense that grew heavier with each waiting day. . . .

The blind woman was first to see.

There was another dinner at Jonathan's house, by way of celebration of
the plans' completion, with music, most of which came from his violin.
Esther sung only twice, because that was one of the days when the
throat behaved ill. "I've been working it a little too hard," she
explained.

Between times they were very gay. It seemed to Jonathan that his
guests were unusually witty and happy.

Mrs. Radbourne was _not_ asleep, though the lids drooped over the poor
sightless eyes. She was listening. But not to the music or jests.
And she was seeing, through a sense that only blind people have.

When Jonathan came back from his walk with his guests to the trolley,
she was waiting for him.

He began to pace back and forth across the room. She listened closely
to the quick staccato tread.

"You seem very happy over something, Jonathan."

"I am." She did not need eyes to know that he was beaming. "Did you
notice that they both seemed in better spirits