"Come," he said, quickly, "lean on me, you are weak still, it would refresh you to breathe a little sweet meadow air out of doors, for the air here is thick and heavy. But it is not good for us yet, the doctor says. Our eyes would get sore, and be blind again, if they were to look out into the light too soon. Oh, I know already what light and darkness mean. No flute note is so sweet as when your eyes can do that. It hurt me, I must say, yet I could have looked for ever into the beautiful coloured world, so blissful was the pain. You will feel it too. But it must be many days before we are so happy. But then I will do nothing all day long but see. I want to know so many things, Mary. They say that each thing has a different colour. I wonder what colours your face and mine are? Dark or bright? It would be horrible if they were not very bright. Shall I know you with my eyes? now, touching you so, I could pick you out with my little finger from all the other people in the world. But in future we shall have to learn to know each other all anew again. I know now that your hair and cheeks are soft to touch, will they be so to my eyes? I want to know so much, and it is so long to wait." After this fashion he chattered incessantly, without remarking how silently she walked beside him. Many of his words had sunk deep into her heart. It had never occurred to her that she too was to see, and she hardly knew what to think about it. She had heard of mirrors, without understanding what was meant. She thought now that when a person who saw opened his eyes, his own face appeared to him. When she was again in her little bed, and her mother thought she slept, the idea flashed across her mind. "It would be horrible if our faces were not bright!" She had heard of ugly and beautiful, and she knew that ugly people were pitied, and often less loved than others. "Oh, if I should be ugly," she thought to herself, "and he care no more about me. It used to be all the same when he played with my hair and called it silken threads. That will all cease now if he sees that I am ugly; and he--even if he _is_ ugly, I will never let him know it, because I shall love him still. But no! I _know_ that he _cannot_ be ugly--he _cannot_ be." Long she lay restless with sorrow and anxiety. The air was sultry; without, in the garden, the nightingales called complainingly to each other, and a sobbing west wind beat against the window panes. She was entirely alone in the chamber, for her mother's bed, which had been placed beside hers, had been removed on account of the closeness of the room. And besides, they no longer thought a night watcher necessary, as her fever had entirely disappeared. And just on this very evening it returned again, and tossed her to and fro, until, long after midnight, a short, heavy sleep fell upon her.