Annie silently offered the key to the girls. Nora unlocked the door. “Tit for tat, old man,” she said. “Show yourself a man, and don’t bear a grudge.” But without a word or sign he had opened the door and gone, his face closed, his head dropped. “That’ll learn him,” said Laura. “Coddy!” said Nora. “Shut up, for God’s sake!” cried Annie fiercely, as if in torture. “Well, I’m about ready to go, Polly. Look sharp!” said Muriel. The girls were all anxious to be off. They were tidying themselves hurriedly, with mute, stupefied faces. THE BLIND MAN Isabel Pervin was listening for two sounds—for the sound of wheels on the drive outside and for the noise of her husband’s footsteps in the hall. Her dearest and oldest friend, a man who seemed almost indispensable to her living, would drive up in the rainy dusk of the closing November day. The trap had gone to fetch him from the station. And her husband, who had been blinded in Flanders, and who had a disfiguring mark on his brow, would be coming in from the outhouses. He had been home for a year now. He was totally blind. Yet they had been very happy. The Grange was Maurice’s own place. The back was a farmstead, and the Wernhams, who occupied the rear premises, acted as farmers. Isabel lived with her husband in the handsome rooms in front. She and he had been almost entirely alone together since he was wounded. They talked and sang and read together in a wonderful and unspeakable intimacy. Then she reviewed books for a Scottish newspaper, carrying on her old interest, and he occupied himself a good deal with the farm. Sightless, he could still discuss everything with Wernham, and he could also do a good deal of work about the place—menial work, it is true, but it gave him satisfaction. He milked the cows, carried in the pails, turned the separator, attended to the pigs and horses. Life was still very full and strangely serene for the blind man, peaceful with the almost incomprehensible peace of immediate contact in darkness. With his wife he had a whole world, rich and real and invisible. They were newly and remotely happy. He did not even regret the loss of his sight in these times of dark, palpable joy. A certain exultance swelled his soul.