e. Next morning the terrible glare began again. Then
everything went red. I was nearly crazy when you found me, Mr. Garth."

"Please call me Hugh," he murmured, taking her hand in his. "I feel in a
way that you belong to me now--I saved you from dying alone there in the
cold and brought you back to my home. I've got jettison rights, Sylvie."
She let him hold her hand, and flushed.

"You'll never know what it felt like to hear your voice call to me, to
feel you pulling me up. I'd only just dropped a few minutes before, but
I'd never have struggled up. It would have been the end." She trembled
in the memory, and he patted her hand. "I don't know why a man like
you lives off here in this wild place, but thank God, you do live here!
Though," she added with wistfulness, twisting her soft mouth, "though I
can't ever quite see why God should care much for a Sylvie Doone." She
touched the lids of her closed eyes. "I wonder why it doesn't worry me
more not to be able to see. Now that the pain's gone, I don't seem to
care much."

"Thank God. Perhaps, though," he added half-grudgingly, "in a few days
you'll see again."

She smiled. "I'd just love to see _you_. You must be wonderful!"

"What makes you think that?" he asked, his warped face glowing.

"You're so strong and young, such thick hair, such finely shaped hands
and such a voice." Sylvie's associates had been of a profession that
deals perpetually in personalities. "If I'd been blind a long time, I
suppose I could just run my hand over your face, and I'd know what you
look like. But I can't tell a thing." She felt for his face and brushed
it eagerly with her fingers, laughing at herself. "I just know that you
have thick eyelashes and are clean-shaven. Is Bella your wife? And that
big little boy your son?"

He started. "No, she's a faithful thing, the boy's nurse. And the
kid's my young brother--a great gawk of a boy for his age, a regular
bean-pole."

"It's so hard to tell anything about people if you can't see them. I
wouldn't have thought he was so big. Is he about fourteen or fifteen? He
speaks so low and gently; he might be any age."

"And a man's height--pretty near too big to lick, though he needs it."

"And Bella, what's she like?"

"A dried-up mummy of a woman."

The kitchen door creaked. Hugh started and shot a look over his
shoulder. Bella stood on the kitchen threshold with an expressionless
face and lowered eyelids.

"Why did you jump?" asked Sylv