“When you hear all the world laugh, they laugh at me because I am horrible.”

“I love you,” said Dea.

After a silence, she added,—­

“I was in death; you brought me to life.  When you are here, heaven is by my side.  Give me your hand, that I may touch heaven.”

Their hands met and grasped each other.  They spoke no more, but were silent in the plenitude of love.

Ursus, who was crabbed, had overheard this.  The next day, when the three were together, he said,—­

“For that matter, Dea is ugly also.”

The word produced no effect.  Dea and Gwynplaine were not listening.  Absorbed in each other, they rarely heeded such exclamations of Ursus.  Their depth was a dead loss.

This time, however, the precaution of Ursus, “Dea is also ugly,” indicated in this learned man a certain knowledge of women.  It is certain that Gwynplaine, in his loyalty, had been guilty of an imprudence.  To have said, I am ugly, to any other blind girl than Dea might have been dangerous.  To be blind, and in love, is to be twofold blind.  In such a situation dreams are dreamt.  Illusion is the food of dreams.  Take illusion from love, and you take from it its aliment.  It is compounded of every enthusiasm, of both physical and moral admiration.

Moreover, you should never tell a woman a word difficult to understand.  She will dream about it, and she often dreams falsely.  An enigma in a reverie spoils it.  The shock caused by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it strikes.  At times it happens, without our knowing why, that because we have received the obscure blow of a chance word the heart empties itself insensibly of love.  He who loves perceives a decline in his happiness.  Nothing is to be feared more than this slow exudation from the fissure in the vase.

Happily, Dea was not formed of such clay.  The stuff of which other women are made had not been used in her construction.  She had a rare nature.  The frame, but not the heart, was fragile.  A divine perseverance in love was in the heart of her being.

The whole disturbance which the word used by Gwynplaine had produced in her ended in her saying one day,—­

“To be ugly—­what is it?  It is to do wrong.  Gwynplaine only does good.  He is handsome.”

Then, under the form of interrogation so familiar to children and to the blind, she resumed,—­

“To see—­what is it that you call seeing?  For my own part, I cannot see; I know.  It seems that to see means to hide.”

“What do you mean?” said Gwynplaine.

Dea answered,—­

“To see is a thing which conceals the true.”

“No,” said Gwynplaine.

“But yes,” replied Dea, “since you say you are ugly.”

She reflected a moment, and then said, “Story-teller!”

Gwynplaine felt the joy of having confessed and of not being believed. 
Both his conscience and his love were consoled.