"We shall have heaps of games in the future," he had said unthinkingly, and stopped rather abruptly. In the silence that followed he heard Madge just stir in her chair; an assent had dropped from her lips, but she had said no more, and it was clear to them both that their thoughts had met. Then Evelyn spoke. "Madge, has it ever occurred to you what we are going to do?" he said. "How we are going to live, I mean?" "Yes, dear, I have thought about it a good deal. I didn't speak of it, since I hoped you wouldn't begin to think about it yet." "There were forty-three pounds?" he said; "from which you have to subtract our railway fares." "Yes, dear," she said almost inaudibly. The Angel of Pain turned that screw a little more. They could bear a little more of that. "There is an unfinished portrait of Lady Taverner," said he. "There is the finished portrait of you. But even if we sold those, what next, what afterwards?" "Ah, there is no necessity to think about it," said Madge quickly. "Of course mother will help us. She will do what she can. And Guy Ellington, of course----" "We shall have to live on their alms, you mean?" said he with a sudden dreadful bitterness. "On the pity of others? They can't do it, besides. They can't support us. And even if they could, how could we accept it?" His hand, with the rapid, hovering movement so characteristic of the blind, felt over the bedclothes and found hers. He was acquiring this blind touch with extraordinary rapidity. "Madge, do you hate me for having married you?" he asked. "Would it have been better for you if we had never seen each other? Here are you, tied--eternally tied--to a beggar and a cripple, half a man with half a face!" For one moment she winced at the thought of that which she did not yet know. Supposing it was very terrible, supposing she cried out at it? But she recovered herself at once. "I bless God every day for your love, dear," she said. He was silent after this a little, his fingers playing over hers. "I am getting blind man's hands already," he said. "I can feel which your rings are. There, that is the wedding-ring, that is easy, and the one with sapphires in it. No, it can't be that, there are four stones in this, and there are only three sapphires. Ah, that is the ruby ring; do you remember how you scolded me for giving it you? Then on the next finger one pearl: that is easy. Then the first finger, no rings there, but--yes, at that knuckle the little scar that runs up halfway to the next knuckle, where you cut your finger to the bone when you were a girl over the broken glass."