“Pardon my clumsiness,” he said to the lady.  “I am, unfortunately, quite blind.  But,” he added, with a smile, to turn off the mishap, “even a blind man must have a house.”

The man who had eyes was surprised to see a flood of colour rush into Mrs. Creake’s face.

“Blind!” she exclaimed, “oh, I beg your pardon.  Why did you not tell me?  You might have fallen.”

“I generally manage fairly well,” he replied.  “But, of course, in a strange house—­”

She put her hand on his arm very lightly.

“You must let me guide you, just a little,” she said.

The house, without being large, was full of passages and inconvenient turnings.  Carrados asked an occasional question and found Mrs. Creake quite amiable without effusion.  Mr. Carlyle followed them from room to room in the hope, though scarcely the expectation, of learning something that might be useful.

“This is the last one.  It is the largest bedroom,” said their guide.  Only two of the upper rooms were fully furnished and Mr. Carlyle at once saw, as Carrados knew without seeing, that this was the one which the Creakes occupied.

“A very pleasant outlook,” declared Mr. Carlyle.

“Oh, I suppose so,” admitted the lady vaguely.  The room, in fact, looked over the leafy garden and the road beyond.  It had a French window opening on to a small balcony, and to this, under the strange influence that always attracted him to light, Carrados walked.

“I expect that there is a certain amount of repair needed?” he said, after standing there a moment.

“I am afraid there would be,” she confessed.

“I ask because there is a sheet of metal on the floor here,” he continued.  “Now that, in an old house, spells dry rot to the wary observer.”

“My husband said that the rain, which comes in a little under the window, was rotting the boards there,” she replied.  “He put that down recently.  I had not noticed anything myself.”

It was the first time she had mentioned her husband; Mr. Carlyle pricked up his ears.

“Ah, that is a less serious matter,” said Carrados.  “May I step out on to the balcony?”

“Oh yes, if you like to.”  Then, as he appeared to be fumbling at the catch, “Let me open it for you.”

But the window was already open, and Carrados, facing the various points of the compass, took in the bearings.

“A sunny, sheltered corner,” he remarked.  “An ideal spot for a deck-chair and a book.”

She shrugged her shoulders half contemptuously.

“I dare say,” she replied, “but I never use it.”

“Sometimes, surely,” he persisted mildly.  “It would be my favourite retreat.  But then—­”

“I was going to say that I had never even been out on it, but that would not be quite true.  It has two uses for me, both equally romantic; I occasionally shake a duster from it, and when my husband returns late without his latchkey he wakes me up and I come out here and drop him mine.”