"I mean did you _notice_ anything about them?" He was trying to be the same without much success. "Just that you put your hand up to them as if they hurt." "Oh." Great relief. "Yes, they do smart a little. I guess I've been using them too much. I'm putting some eye-drops in them now." "Can I help you, Ernie? And shouldn't you see an opto ... ocu ... optha ... I mean an eye doctor?" Ernie answered "No" to both those questions, but of course it took a lot more lying and improvising and general smoothing out before his sister would even pretend to be satisfied and stop her general nagging for the evening. She was getting uncomfortably cagy and curious lately, addicted to asking such questions out of a blue sky as: "Ernie, when we were visiting Uncle Fabius, did you actually believe that you went out and bought gas?" That one momentarily brought Ernie's stammer back, something which hadn't troubled him for years. And when she wasn't asking questions, her quiet studying of him for long minutes was even more upsetting. * * * * * Next morning, on the way to the electric train, Ernie made a purchase at the drugstore. When he sat down beside Vivian, she took one look at him and gave a very deliberate-sounding hollow laugh. "Black glasses!" she said. "I tell him he's attractive because he has Flashing Eyes and within two days he's wearing black glasses. I suppose I should have guessed it." "But my eyes hurt," Ernie protested. "Sensitive to sunlight, I think." He wished he could explain to her that he'd bought the glasses not only in case he got caught out at night, but also to convince his sister he hadn't been lying about sore eyes. He hadn't intended to wear them by day and hardly knew why he'd put them on before joining Vivian. "Spare me your rationalizations," she said. "Your motives are clear to me, Ernie, and they happen to be very commonplace." She leaned toward him and her voice, little more than a whisper, took on an unexpectedly gloomy, chilling, hopeless tone. "See these people all around us, Ernie? They're suicides, every one of them. Day by day, in every way, they're killing themselves. People love them, admire them, and it only makes them uneasy. They have abilities and charms by the bushel--yes, they do, even that man with the wen on his neck--and they only try to hide them. The spotlight turns their way and they goof. They think they're running away from failure, but actually they're running away from success." Ernie looked at them, he couldn't help it, her voice made him, and the ability of Page-at-a-Glance Reading chose that moment to come back to him, only applied to faces instead of letters, and there seemed to be another ability along with it, unclear as yet but frightening. He felt like a very old detective scanning the lineup for the thousandth time.