'So do
your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?--touch my scar.'
Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the
blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers
on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with
his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured
eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from
side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood
as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.
Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow,
and stood holding it in his own.
'Oh, my God' he said, 'we shall know each other now, shan't we? We shall
know each other now.'
Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his
own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear,
lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was
actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship.
Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship which Bertie shrank from
most.
'We're all right together now, aren't we?' said Maurice. 'It's all right
now, as long as we live, so far as we're concerned?'
'Yes,' said Bertie, trying by any means to escape.
Maurice stood with head lifted, as if listening. The new delicate
fulfilment of mortal friendship had come as a revelation and surprise to
him, something exquisite and unhoped-for.
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