have brought me where I am and you where you are.  I’m a disarmed and helpless revolte by myself.  One doesn’t want to go from bad to worse.  One wants instinctively to progress from good to better.  One makes mistakes and seeks to rectify them—­if it is possible.  One sees suffering arise as the result of one’s involuntary acts, and one wishes wistfully to relieve it.  That’s the simple truth, Robin.  Only a simple truth is often a very complex thing.  It seems so with us.”

“It is,” Hollister muttered, “and it might easily become more so.”

“Ah, well,” she said, “that is scarcely likely.  You were always pretty dependable, Robin.  And I’m no longer an ignorant little fool to rush thoughtlessly in where either angels or devils might fear to tread.  We shall see.”

She swung around on her heel.  Hollister watched her walk away along the river path.  He scarcely knew what he thought, what he felt, except that what he felt and thought disturbed him to the point of sadness, of regret.  He sat musing on the curious, contradictory forces at work in his life.  It was folly to be wise, to be sensitive, to respond too quickly, to see too clearly; and ignorance, dumbness of soul, was also fatal.  Either way there was no escape.  A man did his best and it was futile,—­or seemed so to him, just then.

His gaze followed Myra while his thought ran upon Doris, upon his boy, wondering if the next steamer would bring him sentence of banishment from all that he valued, or if there would be a respite, a stay of execution, a miracle of affection that would survive and override the terrible reality—­or what seemed to him the terrible reality—­of his disfigured face.  He had abundant faith in Doris—­of the soft voice and the keen, quick mind, the indomitable spirit and infinite patience—­but he had not much faith in himself, in his own power.  He was afraid of her restored sight, which would leave nothing to the subtle play of her imagination.

And following Myra with that mechanical noting of her progress, his eyes, which were very keen, caught some movement in a fringe of willows that lined the opposite shore of the river some three hundred yards below.  He looked more sharply.  He had developed a hunter’s faculty for interpreting movement in the forest, and although he had nothing more positive than instinct and a brief flash upon which to base conclusions, he did not think that movement of the leaves was occasioned by any creature native to the woods.

On impulse he rose, went inside, and taking his binoculars from their case, focused the eight-power lenses on the screen of brush, keeping himself well within the doorway where he could see without being seen.