'
There was a pause.
'Sometimes I feel I am horrible,' said Maurice, in a low voice, talking
as if to himself. And Bertie actually felt a quiver of horror.
'That's nonsense,' he said.
Maurice again straightened himself, leaving the cat.
'There's no telling,' he said. Then again, in an odd tone, he added: 'I
don't really know you, do I?'
'Probably not,' said Bertie.
'Do you mind if I touch you?'
The lawyer shrank away instinctively. And yet, out of very philanthropy,
he said, in a small voice: 'Not at all.'
But he suffered as the blind man stretched out a strong, naked hand to
him. Maurice accidentally knocked off Bertie's hat.
'I thought you were taller,' he said, starting. Then he laid his hand on
Bertie Reid's head, closing the dome of the skull in a soft, firm grasp,
gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing
again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the
face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed
eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short
moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man
grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to
take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.
'You seem young,' he said quietly, at last.
The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.
'Your head seems tender, as if you were young,' Maurice repeated.
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