"And I've deceived even you!" he laughed. Tears had been rolling down her cheeks. At his laugh she gave way. An answering choke, hysterical, filled her throat, and she burst into a fit of sobbing. He laid his hand tenderly on her head. "My dear, don't. I am the happiest man alive. And, as for eyes, I'm rich enough to buy a hundred pairs. I'm a perfect Argus!" But Winifred Goode wept uncontrollably. There was deep pity for him in her heart, but--never to be revealed to mortal--there was also horrible, terrifying joy. She gripped her hands and sobbed frantically to keep herself from laughter. A woman's sense of humour is often cruel, only to be awakened by tragic incongruities. She had passed through her month's agony and shame for a blind man. At last she mastered herself. "Forgive me, dear Roger. It was a dreadful shock. Blindness has always been to me too awful for thought--like being buried alive." "Not a bit of it," he said cheerily. "I've run a successful business in the dark--real estate--buying and selling and developing land, you know--a thing which requires a man to keep a sharp look-out, and which he couldn't do if he were buried alive. It's a confounded nuisance, I admit, but so is gout. Not half as irritating as the position of a man I once knew who had both hands cut off." She shivered. "That's horrible." "It is," said he, "but blindness isn't." The maid appeared with the tea-tray, which she put on a rustic table. It was then that Winifred noticed the little proud awkwardness of the blind man. There was pathos in his insistent disregard of his affliction. The imperfectly cut lower half of a watercress sandwich fell on his coat and stayed there. She longed to pick it off, but did not dare, for fear of hurting him. He began to talk again of the house--the scheme of decoration. "Oh, it all seems so sad!" she cried. "What?" "You'll not be able to see the beautiful things." "Good Heavens," he retorted, "do you think I am quite devoid of imagination? And do you suppose no one will enter the house but myself?" "I never thought of that," she admitted. "As for the interior, I've got the plan in my head, and could walk about it now blindfold, only that's unnecessary; and when it's all fixed up, I'll have a ground model made of every room, showing every piece of furniture, so that, when I get in, I'll know the size, shape, colour, quality of every blessed thing in the house. You see if I don't." "These gifts are a merciful dispensation of Providence." "Maybe," said he drily. "Only they were about the size of bacteria when I started, and it took me years of incessant toil to develop them." He asked to be shown around the garden. She took him up the gravelled walks beside her gay borders and her roses, telling him the names and varieties of the flowers. Once he stopped and frowned. "I've lost my bearings. We ought to be passing under the shade of the old walnut tree."