At present, anyhow, by a great effort, she put off the moment which she foresaw must come. He could not remain indefinitely ignorant, his own hands must some day inform him. But just now he was eager and interested in this new game. By a splendid effort of vitality and will, he had pushed into the background the fact of his blindness: he had put it for the time being, anyhow, among the inevitable and accepted facts of life, while he had filled his foreground with the fact that he had eyes in his fingers. How glorious that bit of bravery was she knew well, for he was so brave that just now he was not even acting; he genuinely looked forward to the future, not without hope. At her bidding he had left the grinding difficulties of the future alone, he had left the question of the stark fact as to how they were to live, he had left also the fact of his own supreme deprivation, and with a splendid effort he looked on the possibilities that might lie in front of them, not on the limitations, cramping and binding, that certainly lay there. "Yes, all those things are easy," he said; "of course I can tell a toothpick and a sovereign-case, that is a mere effort of memory. But let's go on, if you are not tired of it. You see, dear, you've got to educate me now; I am just a child again, learning a new set of letters. Now give me really new letters." Now Lady Dover a day before, in her quiet way, had telegraphed to London for a couple of packs of blind cards. They had the index in raised cardboard in the corner, and had arrived this morning. She had put them in the dressing-room adjoining his bedroom, and had just mentioned it to Madge, in the way that, had she been a stranger in the house, she might have mentioned where the bath-room was. "Mr. Dundas is so eager and alive," she had said, "that I thought, dear Madge, that he might like to begin any moment to accustom himself a little, poor fellow, to his new circumstances. So you will find a couple of packs of raised cards, I think they call them, in the dressing-room. I thought he might perhaps feel inclined to experiment with them." So Madge fetched them now, and a couple of minutes afterwards she and Evelyn were deep in a game of picquet. His childish pleasure in "new things" stood him in good stead now; he got as excited as a schoolboy over the riddle of what his hand contained. Again and again he fingered the raised index in the corner, with sudden bursts of triumph when he solved it to his own satisfaction. "Ah, I used to call you slow at picquet, Madge," he cried, "but you can't retaliate. How very good for you! If you call me slow, I shall merely throw the cards away and burst into tears. Seven or nine, which on earth is it? Don't look and tell me. I trust you not to look."