"I suppose they've told you--I suppose everybody knows all about that--that insane thing I did, coming out here. Well, I was desperate, that's all. Yet it seems there are good people left in the world. You are all good people. If only I could see; so I could tell what to do. Then maybe I could earn my living, someway--if I have to live. "Good-hearted, isn't he--Mr. Gage?" She nodded with a woman's confident intuition as she went on. "He didn't cast me out. What can I do to repay him?" He could make no answer. "Little to give him, Doctor--but of course, if he could--in any sort of justice--accept--accept----" Doctor Barnes suddenly reached out a hand and pushed her hair back from her forehead. "I wouldn't," said he. "Please don't. Take things easy for a little while." She turned her dark and sightless eyes upon him. "No!" said she. "That isn't the way we do in my family. We don't take things easy." "Has he said anything to you?" asked Doctor Barnes after a long time. "I have very much reluctance to ask." "He's too much of a man," she said. "No, not yet. It was a sort of bargain, even if we didn't say so outright. 'Object, matrimony!' I came out here with my eyes open. But now God has closed them. . . . Will you tell me the truth?" "Yes." "Does he--do you think he----" "Cares for you?" "Yes!" Doctor Barnes replied with extreme difficulty. "We'll say he does care--that he cares immensely." She nodded. "I wanted to be fair," said she. "I'm glad I can talk to some one I can trust." "What makes you think you can trust me?" blustered Doctor Barnes. "And you're so Puritan foolish, you're going to marry this man? You think that is right?" "He took me in, when I deceived him. I owe my life to him. He's never once hinted or laughed since I came here. Why, he's a gentleman." She turned her head away. "Perhaps he would never know," she added. "Something to take on," commented Doctor Barnes grimly. "I'd try very hard," she went on. "I'd try to do my best. Mrs. Jensen says I could learn a great many things. She has an aunt that's--that has lost her eyesight. It may be my place in the world--here. I want to carry my own weight in the world--or else I want to die." "He seems hard to understand--Mr. Gage," she went on slowly, the damp of sheer anguish on her forehead now at speaking as she never could wish to speak, thus to a stranger, and of the most intimate things of a gentlewoman's life. "As though I didn't know he couldn't ever really love a woman like me! Of course it isn't right either way. It's awful. . . . But I'd do my best. Life is more of a compromise than I used to think it was. But someway, out here--I'd be shut in forever here in this Valley. No one would ever know. It--it wouldn't seem so wicked, some way? It's the end of the world, isn't it, to-day? Well, then----" "I'm trying my best," said Doctor Barnes after a time, "to get at the inside of your mind."