In August she took her vacation. But she did not go away. Part of each day she spent in his room, putting it to rights and keeping it sweet and clean. She liked to do that, because he never failed to note the result of her labors or to thank her. When she had finished her sweeping and dusting, she would sit for an hour or more studying the sketches and plans he had left on easel or table. She thought it a marvel that a young man could think out a church so proportioned that its harmonies set one to dreaming and thinking, so devised that it would not fall down though the storms of centuries charged against it. And it was a relief to think of him and his work; it took her mind from an ugly little fear lurking in her heart. Her throat did not always behave as a well-meaning throat should. Sometimes she studied also a new photograph on his mantel--of a pretty laughing-eyed young woman playing with a sailor-suited cherub. The young woman, she knew must be the wife of whom he never spoke. "You are very pretty," she would whisper. "Why do you stay away from him? Don't you know he is lonely, with no one to cheer him up but a funny little man--and me? You're the reason he gave up his own work." She tried not to be prejudiced against Mrs. David Quentin. But she had a burning curiosity, which is a weakness of all women--and men. She mentioned the picture one evening, very casually. "This is your family, is it not?" "Yes," he said in a queer curt tone she had never heard him use. "She is very pretty, isn't she?" "Yes. They are--spending the summer at an aunt's." "What a darling little boy!" she said. Soon after she left, thinking, "I wonder _why_ she is away from him? It isn't a happy reason, I'm sure. . . . _I_ wouldn't stay away from him." David was thinking much the same thing. The next day the picture was nowhere in evidence. When he went down-stairs one evening to tell her the plans were complete, she dissembled her excitement and said, "Now you'll be able to get enough sleep." But when, after a few minutes of gay nonsense, he had left her to take her advice, and she thought what success would mean to him, she became very grave and had her first taste of a suspense that grew heavier with each waiting day. . . . The blind woman was first to see. There was another dinner at Jonathan's house, by way of celebration of the plans' completion, with music, most of which came from his violin. Esther sung only twice, because that was one of the days when the throat behaved ill. "I've been working it a little too hard," she explained. Between times they were very gay. It seemed to Jonathan that his guests were unusually witty and happy. Mrs. Radbourne was _not_ asleep, though the lids drooped over the poor sightless eyes. She was listening. But not to the music or jests. And she was seeing, through a sense that only blind people have.