The stress between us grew rapidly, but by gradual steps, almost imperceptibly. Her hand rested in mine a trifle longer. The hand clasp became a caress—then a kiss. The kiss lingered.... So the voice took on a body. Touch came to the aid of hearing as a means of contact with this dear person of the darkness. It is strange in what a fragmentary way she took shape in my consciousness as something more than a paid nurse, more close and intimate than any friend I had known in the light. In the darkness every other thing seemed strange. What I discovered by touch to be a table, did not fit into the old category of "tables." Even the pipe which I had smoked since college seemed to have undergone some fundamental change in its nature. Ann was the only thing which seemed natural. I had had no intimacy with woman of the light by which I could judge this experience. Coming to me as it did, it did not seem strange—it made subsequent things seem strange. When at last my eyes were opened, I blushed before Ann as before a stranger. It all seemed so inevitable. "It’s late," she said one night, "I must go. If you want me, ring." "Of course I want you." "But you ought to sleep. I mean, ring if anything happens." "It don’t matter whether anything happens or not. I——" "Don’t ring unless you need me." The door closed behind her. I lay there debating with myself whether or not I needed her. The bell was in reach of my hand. I got out of bed to be further from temptation. With awkward trembling hands, I filled and lit my pipe and sat down by the open window. My head ached with loneliness and desolation. Off somewhere in the night a church bell struck two, some belated footsteps rang sharp and clear on the sidewalk below me. I tried to interest myself in speculating whither or to whom the person was hurrying. But my thoughts swung back to my own loneliness. In all the world there was no one who knew of my blindness and cared except the tin-can merchant who was cursing that he must have the trouble to find someone to finish my work. No. There was Ann. Quite suddenly a vision of my childhood came back to me, of the time I had been sick at Mary Dutton’s, when she had taken me into the warm comfort of her bed. The vision brought quick resolution. I rang the bell. I stood up against the wall and waited—breathless. The door opened and from the darkness came her voice. "Do you really want me?" I do not think I spoke, but I remember reaching out my hands to her. My strained ears caught a faint rustle—then came touch—and my arms were about her. So I was comforted. *IV* For the night there was rich forgetfulness. But the new day called me back from the Elysian Fields to the cold reality of this ordinary world of ours.