Chapter 7 - Page 2

the watch. I happened to have a glimpse
of the movement at which he pounced on her and caught her in the
act."

I had thought it all out; my idea explained many things, and
Dawling turned pale as he listened to me.

"Was he rough with her?" he anxiously asked.

"How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place."

My companion stared. "Do you mean to say her eyesight's going?"

"Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?"

"How DOES she take life? That's the question!" He sat there
bewilderedly brooding; the tears rose to his lids; they reminded me
of those I had seen in Flora's the day I risked my enquiry. The
question he had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was
ready to answer, but I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my
reflections had suggested. I was indeed privately astonished at
their ingenuity. For the present I only rejoined that it struck me
she was playing a particular game; at which he went on as if he
hadn't heard me, suddenly haunted with a fear, lost in the dark
possibility. "Do you mean there's a danger of anything very bad?"

"My dear fellow, you must ask her special adviser."

"Who in the world is her special adviser?"

"I haven't a conception. But we mustn't get too excited. My
impression would be that she has only to observe a few ordinary
rules, to exercise a little common sense."

Dawling jumped at this. "I see--to stick to the pince-nez."

"To follow to the letter her oculist's prescription, whatever it is
and at whatever cost to her prettiness. It's not a thing to be
trifled with."

"Upon my honour it SHAN'T be!" he roundly declared; and he adjusted
himself to his position again as if we had quite settled the
business. After a considerable interval, while I botched away, he
suddenly said: "Did they make a great difference?"

"A great difference?"

"Those things she had put on."

"Oh the glasses--in her beauty? She looked queer of course, but it
was partly because one was unaccustomed. There are women who look
charming in nippers. What, at any rate, if she does look queer?
She must be mad not to accept that alternative."

"She IS mad," said Geoffrey Dawling.

"Mad to refuse you, I grant. Besides," I went on, "the pince-nez,
which was a large and peculiar one, was all awry: she had half
pulled it off, but it continued to stick, and she was crimson, she
was angry."

"It must have been horrible!" my companion groaned.

"It WAS horrible. But it's still more horrible to defy all
warnings; it's still more horrible to be landed in--" Without
saying in what I disgustedly shrugged my shoulders.

After a glance at me Dawling