"Then, if you have courage, you ought to stay here and see things through. You tell me this is right and this is not right--how do you know? I owe you very much--but ought you to decide everything for me? Let me also be the judge. If there's any problem in these matters, anything unsaid, let's face it _all_. Cut into my eyes, but don't cut into my soul any more. If you gave me back my sight, and did not give me back every unsettled problem, with all the facts before me to settle it at last, you would leave me with unhappiness hanging over me as long as ever I lived. Not even my eyes would pay me for it." She rose, stumbling, reaching out a hand to save herself; and he dared not touch her hand even to aid her now. "Oh, fine of you all," she said bitterly. "Did the Emperor of Prussia ever do more? You, whom I have never seen in all my life! Any situation that is hard here for you--take it. Haven't I done as much? If there's any other fight on ahead unsettled for you, can't you fight it out? Can't you give me the privilege--since you've been talking of a woman's rights and privileges--to fight out my own battles too--to fight out all of life's fights, even to take all of its losses? I'd rather have it that way. That means I want to see you, who you are, what you are, whether you are good, whether you are just, whether you are light, whether----" "You have a keen mind," said he slowly. "You're telling me to stay here. If we could meet face to face as though you never had been blind--why, then--I might say something or do something which would make you feel that I believed you never had been married. I have told you that already." "Yes! Then surely you will not go away. Because you have brought up a problem between you and me---- Aren't we big enough to fight that out between us? Ought we not? Give me my eyes! Give me my rights! "Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just the other day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, I called out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me. I said No; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price. I said it would be sweeter to be blind and remain deceived. But that's gone by. I've been thinking since then. Now I want it all--all! I want all the fight of it, all the risk of it. Then, after I've taken my chance and made my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at the end! I want life! Don't you? I've always had the feeling that you were a strong man. I don't want anything I haven't earned. I'll never give what hasn't been earned. I won't ever pray for what isn't mine." "Now I'm ready," she repeated simply. "I can't talk any more, and you mustn't. Good-by." She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speak to his hand clasp. "At two!" was all he managed to say.