“Because I—­I love her, I suppose.”

“Did you ask her to marry you?” Suydam had been itching to ask the question for days.

“No, I was just getting to it when Pointer bolted.  I—­I’m slow at such things.”  There was a moment’s pause.  “Doc, what’s the matter with my eyes?  I can’t see very well.”

“Don’t talk so much,” ordered the physician.  “You’re lucky to be here at all.  Thanks to that copper-riveted constitution of yours, you’ll get well.”

But it seemed that the patient was fated to disappoint the predictions of his friend as well as those of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital.  He did not recover in a manner satisfactory to his medical adviser, and although he regained the most of his bodily vigor, the injury to his eyes baffled even the most skilled specialists.

He was very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor Suydam by the uncomplaining fortitude with which he bore examination after examination.  Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world, went slowly blind.  The shadows crept in upon him with a deadly, merciless certainty that would have filled the stoutest heart with gloom, and yet he maintained a smiling stoicism that deceived all but his closest associates.  To Doctor Suydam, however, the incontestable progress of the malady was frightfully tragic.  He alone knew the man’s abundant spirits, his lofty ambitions, and his active habits.  He alone knew of the overmastering love that had come so late and was destined to go unvoiced, and he raved at the maddening limits of his profession.  In Austin’s presence he strove to be cheerful and to lighten the burden he knew was crushing the sick man; but at other times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of.  In time, however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned himself to the worst.  He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness he could muster, of her part in this calamity.  But Austin would not hear of it.

“She doesn’t dream of the truth,” the invalid told him.  “And I don’t want her to learn.  She thinks I’m merely weak, and it grieves her terribly to know that I haven’t recovered.  If she really knew—­it might ruin her life, for she is a girl who feels deeply.  I want to spare her that; it’s the least I can do.”

“But she’ll find it out some time.”

“I think not.  She comes to see me every day—­”

“Every day?”

“Yes.  I’m expecting her soon.”

“And she doesn’t know?”

Austin shook his head.  “I never let her see there’s anything the matter with my sight.  She drives up with her mother, and I wait for her there in the bay-window.  It’s getting hard for me to distinguish her now, but I recognize the hoofbeats—­I can tell them every time.”