"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to me you have always been the same. I can see you as you sit there, with your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which the blood comes and goes--oh, Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured girls nowadays, who could not blush if--well--well----I know 'em, although I'm blind--I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you, with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let me feel it." She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way. "Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?" "You're the most wonderful man living," she said. "I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know. I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave. I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes. You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a knighthood--the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to artists and writers and men of science--and, if I could live, I'd raise hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of honour between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger----" "My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited." "I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But--what I haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret--if I could live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy Councillor--a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation--a thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this country--the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think of it! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the world that is of any importance." "What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but never familiar with, his vehement paradox. "Love," said he. He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few seconds of tense silence. "Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?" She bent forward, and he put his arm round her neck and drew her to him. They kissed each other on the lips. "It's forty years since I kissed you, dear--that day under the wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."