"I'm trained in hide-and-seek," said she. "Sit down, won't you?" He tossed his hat on the table. "Alone?" he asked. "I always am. Annie is busy almost all day, over at the soldier house, you know." "I suppose he is up in the hills to-day?" She knew whom he meant. "Yes. Annie tells me he goes up every other day to look around. I should think he would be afraid." "Annie told you?--doesn't he tell you what he does?" "No. Sometimes in the evening he comes in for a moment." "Well, of course," he went on, "in my capacity as Pooh Bah, Major and doctor too, I've got to be part medico to take care of the poor devils who blow off their hands or drop things on their feet, or eat too much cheap candy at the store. How is Sim's knee by this time?" "He limps a little--I can hear it when he walks on the boards. Annie says that Wid Gardner says that Sim says that his leg's all right." She smiled, and he laughed with her. "That's fine. And how about Madam herself, Mrs. Gage?" She shivered. "I wish you wouldn't call me that. It--well, don't, please. Let's not ever joke." "What shall I call you?" "I don't know. What's _wrong_ here, Doctor?" She faced him now. He evaded. "I was wondering about your health." "Oh, I'm very well. Sometimes my eyes hurt me a little, as though I felt more of the light. Subjective, I suppose." She could not feel him look at her. At length, he spoke, quietly. "I've some news for you, or possible news. It has very much to do with your happiness. Tell me, if it were in my power to give you back your eyes, would you tell me to do that?" "My eyes? What do you mean? To see again?" "If I gave you back your sight, I would be giving you back the truth; and that would be very, very cruel." He saw the fluttering of her throat, the twitching of the hands in her lap, and so hurried on. "Listen! There's a chance in a hundred that your sight can be restored. My old preceptor writes me, from what I've told him, that there is about that chance. If it did succeed----" "Then I'd see again!" "Yes. So you would be very unhappy." "You say a thing like that!" He winced, flushed. "You come here now with hopes that you ought not to offer, and you qualify even that! Fine--fine! You think I can stand much more than I have?" Still the trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat. He endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last. "You'd be perfect then--as lovely as ever any woman--why, you're perfect now! And yet without that one flaw where would you be? You'd not be married then, though you are now." "Go on!" she said at length, coldly. "You don't know one of us here except that girl, Annie, as different from you as night is from day. You don't know about the rest of us. You only think about us, imagine us--you don't see us, don't know us. Ah, God! If you only could! But--if you did!"