"Why not? I must. You're married. That's outside my province now. I've just come to tell you now that I don't think we ought to wait any longer about your eyes. We'll try this afternoon, in our little hospital here. I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will help me all she can, and I'll do my very best." "I'm quite ready." "I don't know whether or not to be glad that you have no curiosity about your own case," he said presently. "That only shows you how helpless I am. I have no choice. I have lost my own identity." "Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what was wrong with your eyes?" "He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis. He didn't like to answer any questions." "The old way--adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming of all professions--medicine! That dates back to bats' wings and toads' livers as cure for the spleen. But at least and at last he said it was iritis?" "Yes. He told me that I might gradually lose one eye--which was true. He thought the trouble might advance to the other eye. It came out that way. He must have known." "Perhaps he knew part," said Doctor Barnes. "You had some pain?" "Unbearable pain part of the time--over the eyes, in the front of the head." "Didn't your doctor tell you what iritis meant?" "No. I suppose inflammation of the eyes--the iris." "Precisely. Now, just because you're a woman of intelligence I'm going to try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you will know what you are facing." "I wish you would." "Very well. Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made up of cells, of tissues. It can know inflammation. As a result of many inflammations there is what we call an exudation--a liquid passes from the tissues. This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier, something like granulations. The tissues are weak--they exude something in their distress, in their attempt to correct this condition when they have been inflamed. "The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film for the eye's picture. "Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamed and began to exude. Such inflammation may come from eye-strain, sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun on the snow. Snow-blindness is sometimes painful. Why? Iritis. "In any case, a chronic irritation came into your case some time. Little by little there came a heavy exudation around the edges of the inflamed iris. It was so heavy that we call it a 'plastic' exudation. Now, that was what was the technical trouble of your eye--plastic exudation.