Thus the husband and
wife had spent the five years of their married life. The last had been
one of blindness and unspeakable intimacy. And now Isabel felt a great
indifference coming over her, a sort of lethargy. She wanted to be
allowed to bear her child in peace, to nod by the fire and drift vaguely,
physically, from day to day. Maurice was like an ominous thunder-cloud.
She had to keep waking up to remember him.
When a little note came from Bertie, asking if he were to put up a
tombstone to their dead friendship, and speaking of the real pain he felt
on account of her husband's loss of sight, she felt a pang, a fluttering
agitation of re-awakening. And she read the letter to Maurice.
'Ask him to come down,' he said.
'Ask Bertie to come here!' she re-echoed.
'Yes--if he wants to.'
Isabel paused for a few moments.
'I know he wants to--he'd only be too glad,' she replied. 'But what about
you, Maurice? How would you like it?'
'I should like it.'
'Well--in that case--But I thought you didn't care for him--'
'Oh, I don't know. I might think differently of him now,' the blind man
replied. It was rather abstruse to Isabel.
'Well, dear,' she said, 'if you're quite sure--'
'I'm sure enough. Let him come,' said Maurice.
So Bertie was coming, coming this evening, in the November rain and
darkness. Isabel was agitated, racked with her old restlessness and
indecision.
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