Hollister had marked this.  It had troubled him.  But he said nothing.  There were times when Doris liked to take refuge in her own thought-world.  He was aware of that, and understood it and let her be, in such moods.

Now she sat with both hands clasped over one knee.  Her face turned toward Myra for a time.  Then her eyes sought her husband’s face with a look which gave Hollister the uneasy, sickening conviction that she saw him quite clearly, that she was looking and appraising.  Then she looked away toward the river, and as her gaze seemed to focus upon something there, an expression of strain, of effort, gathered on her face.  It lasted until Hollister, watching her closely, felt his mouth grow dry.  It hurt him as if some pain, some terrible effort of hers was being communicated to him.  Yet he did not understand, and he could not reach her intimately with Myra sitting by.

Doris spoke at last.

“What is that, Bob?” she asked.  She pointed with her finger.

“A big cedar stump,” he replied.  It stood about thirty feet away.

“Is it dark on one side and light on the other?”

“It’s blackened by fire and the raw wood shows on one side where a piece is split off.”

He felt his voice cracked and harsh.

“Ah,” she breathed.  Her eyes turned to the baby sprawling on his quilt.

Myra rose to her feet.  She picked up the baby, moved swiftly and noiselessly three steps aside, stood holding the boy in her arms.

“You have picked up baby.  You have on a dress with light and dark stripes.  I can see—­I can see.”

Her voice rose exultantly on the last word.  Hollister looked at Myra; she held the boy pressed close to her breast.  Her lips were parted, her pansy-purple eyes were wide and full of alarm as she looked at Hollister.

He felt his scarred face grow white.  And when Doris turned toward him to bend forward and look at him with that strange, peering gaze, he covered his face with his hands.

CHAPTER XVII

“Everything is indistinct, just blurred outlines.  I can’t see colors only as light and dark,” Doris went on, looking at Hollister with that straining effort to see.  “I can only see you now as a vague form without any detail.”

Hollister pulled himself together.  After all, it was no catastrophe, no thunderbolt of fate striking him a fatal blow.  If, with growing clarity of vision, catastrophe ensued, then was time enough to shrink and cower.  That resiliency which had kept him from going before under terrific stress stood him in good stead now.

“It seems almost too good to be true,” he forced himself to say, and the irony of his words twisted his lips into what with him passed for a smile.