“You’re so strong and young, such thick hair, such finely shaped hands and such a voice.” Sylvie’s associates had been of a profession that deals perpetually in personalities. “If I’d been blind a long time, I suppose I could just run my hand over your face, and I’d know what you look like. But I can’t tell a thing.” She felt for his face and brushed it eagerly with her fingers, laughing at herself. “I just know that you have thick eyelashes and are clean-shaven. Is Bella your wife? And that big little boy your son?” He started. “No, she’s a faithful thing, the boy’s nurse. And the kid’s my young brother--a great gawk of a boy for his age, a regular bean-pole.” “It’s so hard to tell anything about people if you can’t see them. I wouldn’t have thought he was so big. Is he about fourteen or fifteen? He speaks so low and gently; he might be any age.” “And a man’s height--pretty near too big to lick, though he needs it.” “And Bella, what’s she like?” “A dried-up mummy of a woman.” The kitchen door creaked. Hugh started and shot a look over his shoulder. Bella stood on the kitchen threshold with an expressionless face and lowered eyelids. “Why did you jump?” asked Sylvie nervously. Hugh wet his lips with his tongue. “Nothing. The door creaked. Go on. Tell me more, child,” he urged. “No. I want to hear about you now. Tell me your story.” Hugh clenched his hands and flushed darkly. He glanced over his shoulder with a furtive look, but Bella had gone. “No one else rightly knows my story, Sylvie. Will you promise me never to speak of it, to Bella, to Pete, to any one?” “Of course, I promise.” Her face beamed with the pride of a child entrusted with a secret. Then, lowering his voice and moving closer to her chair, he began a fictitious history, a history of persecuted and heroic innocence, of reckless adventure, of daring self-sacrifice. The girl listened with parted lips. Her cheeks glowed. And behind the door, Bella too listened, straining her ears. The murmur of Hugh’s recital, rising now and then to some melodramatic climax, then dropping cautiously, rippled on, broken now and again by Sylvie’s ejaculations. Behind the door Bella stood like a wooden block, colorless and stolid as though she understood not a syllable of what she heard. But after a rigid hour she faltered away, stumbled across the kitchen and out into the snow.