Lawanne once said to him that a man must worship a God, love a woman, or find a real friendship, to make life endurable.  God was too dim, too nebulous, for Hollister’s need.  Friendship was almost unattainable.  How could a man with a face so mutilated that it was grotesque, repellent, cultivate the delicate flower of friendship?  Doris loved him because she could not see him.  When she could see, she would cease to love.  And there would be nothing left for him—­nothing.  He would live on, obedient to the law of his being, a sentient organism, eating and sleeping, thinking starkly, without joy in the reluctant company of his fellows, his footsteps echoing hollowly down the long corridor of the years, emptied of hope and all those pleasant illusions by which man’s spirit is sustained.  But would he?  Would it be worth while?

“I must go back to work,” he said at last.

Doris rose with him, holding him a moment.

“Presently I shall be able to come and watch you work!  I might help.  I know how to walk boom-sticks, to handle timber with a pike pole.  I’m as strong as an ox.  See!”

She put her arms around him and heaved, lifting the hundred and eighty pounds of his weight clear of the ground.  Then she laughed, a low, pleased chuckle, her face flushed with the effort, and turned into the house.

Hollister heard her at the piano as he walked away, thundering out the rollicking air of the “Soldier’s Chorus”, its naive exultance of victory, it seemed to Hollister, expressing well her mood,—­a victory that might mean for him an abyss of sorrow and loneliness out of which he might never lift himself.

CHAPTER XVIII

For a week Hollister nursed this fear which so depressed him, watching the slow return of his wife’s vision, listening to her talk of all they could do together when her sight was fully restored.  From doubt of ocular treatment she changed to an impatient desire of whatever benefit might lie in professional care.  A fever of impatience to see began to burn in her.

So Hollister took her out to Vancouver, thence to Seattle, on to San Francisco, passing from each city to a practitioner of higher standing in the next, until two men with great reputations, and consulting fees in proportion, after a week of observation announced their verdict:  she would regain normal vision, provided so and so—­and in the event of such and such.  There was some mystery about which they were guarded.  They spoke authoritatively about infusions into the vitreous humor and subsequent absorption.  They agreed in language too technical for a layman to understand that the cause of Doris’ blindness was gradually disappearing.  Only when they put aside the formal language of diagnosis and advised treatment did Hollister really fathom what they were talking about.  What they said then was simple.  She must cease to strain for sight of objects.  She must live for a time in neutral lights.  The clearing up of her eyes could perhaps be helped by certain ray treatments, certain forms of electrical massage, which could be given in Vancouver as well as anywhere.