"Well, then, it must have been Miss Gray's own perfect intuition as to what I want, and what I don't want. For from the very first she has never shaken hands, nor in any way touched me. Even in passing across letters, and handing me things, as she does scores of times daily, never once have I felt her fingers against mine." "And this pleases you?" inquired the doctor, blowing smoke rings into the air, and watching the blind face intently. "Ah, I am so grateful for it," said Garth earnestly. "Do you know, Brand, when you suggested sending me a lady nurse and secretary, I felt I could not possibly stand having a woman touch me." "So you said," commented the doctor quietly. "No! Did I? What a bear you must have thought me." "By no means," said the doctor, "but a distinctly unusual patient. As a rule, men--" "Ah, I dare say," Garth interposed half impatiently. "There was a time when I should have liked a soft little hand about me. And I dare say by now I should often enough have caught it and held it, perhaps kissed it--who knows? I used to do such things, lightly enough. But, Brand, when a man has known the touch of THE Woman, and when that touch has become nothing but a memory; when one is dashed into darkness, and that memory becomes one of the few things which remain, and, remaining, brings untold comfort, can you wonder if one fears another touch which might in any way dim that memory, supersede it, or take away from its utter sacredness?" "I understand," said the doctor slowly. "It does not come within my own experience, but I understand. Only--my dear boy, may I say it?--if the One Woman exists--and it is excusable in your case to doubt it, because there were so many--surely her place should be here; her actual touch, one of the things which remain." "Ah, say it," answered Garth, lighting another cigarette. "I like to hear it said, although as a matter of fact you might as well say that if the view from the terrace exists, I ought to be able to see it. The view is there, right enough, but my own deficiency keeps me from seeing it." "In other words," said the doctor, leaning forward and picking up the match which, not being thrown so straight as usual, had just missed the fire; "in other words, though She was the One Woman, you were not the One Man?" "Yes," said Garth bitterly, but almost beneath his breath. "I was 'a mere boy.'" "Or you thought you were not," continued the doctor, seeming not to have heard the last remark. "As a matter of fact, you are always the One Man to the One Woman, unless another is before you in the field. Only it may take time and patience to prove it to her." Garth sat up and turned a face of blank surprise towards the doctor. "What an extraordinary statement!" he said. "Do you really mean it?"