Still, while Helen dwelt on her brother's praise with fond and fluent tongue, she felt without being able to describe her feelings, that he had lost something of his original beauty. The breath of the world had passed over the mind and dimmed its purity. His was the joyous, reckless spirit that gave life to the convivial board; and temptations, which a colder temperament might have resisted, often held him in ignoble vassalage. Now inhaling the hallowed atmosphere of home, all the pure influences of his boyhood resumed their empire over his heart--and he wondered that he could ever have mingled with the grosser elements of society. "Blind!" repeated he to himself, while gazing on the calm, angelic countenance of Alice, so beautiful in its repose. "Is it possible that a creature so fair and bright, dwells in the darkness of perpetual midnight? Can no electric ray pierce the cloud that is folded over her vision? Is there no power in science to remove the dark fillet that binds those celestial eyes, and pour in upon them the light of a new-born day?" While he thus gazed on the unseeing face, so near him that perhaps she might have had a vague consciousness of the intensity, the warmth of the gaze, Helen approached, and taking the hand of Alice, passed it softly over the features of her brother, as well as his profuse and clustering hair. "Alice has eyes in her fingers, Louis--I want her to _see_ you and tell me if I have been a true painter." Louis felt the blood mounting to his temples, as the soft hand of Alice analyzed the outline of his face, and lingered in his hair. It seemed to him a cherub was fluttering its wings against his cheek, diffusing a peace and balminess that no language could describe. Alice, who had yielded involuntarily to the movement of Helen, drew her hand blushingly away. "I cannot imagine how any one can see without touching," said Alice, "how they can take in an image into the soul, by looking at it far off. You tell me the eyes feel no pleasure when gazing at any thing--that it is the mind only which perceives. But my fingers thrill with delight when I touch any thing that pleases, long afterwards."