They came under a high wooded slope.

“Listen to the birds,” she said, with a gentle pressure on his fingers.  “I can smell the woods and feel the air soft as a caress.  I can’t see the buds bursting, or the new, pale-green leaves, but I know what it is like.  Sometimes I think that beauty is a feeling, instead of a fact.  Perhaps if I could see it as well as feel it—­still, the birds wouldn’t sing more sweetly if I could see them there swaying on the little branches, would they, Bob?”

There was a wistfulness, but only a shadow of regret in her tone.  And there were no shadows on the fresh, young face she turned to Hollister.  He bent to kiss that sweet mouth, and he was again thankful that she had no sight to be offended by his devastated features.  His lips, unsightly as they were, had power to stir her.  She blushed and hid her face against his coat.

They found a dry log to sit upon, a great tree trunk cast by a storm above high-water mark.  Now and then a motor whirred by, but for the most part the drive lay silent, a winding ribbon of asphalt between the sea and the wooded heights of Point Grey.  English Bay sparkled between them and the city.  Beyond the purple smoke-haze driven inland by the west wind rose the white crests of the Capilanos, an Alpine background to the seaboard town.  Hollister could hear the whine of sawmills, the rumble of trolley cars, the clang of steel in a great shipyard,—­and the tide whispering on wet sands at his feet, the birds twittering among the budding alders.  And far as his eyes could reach along the coast there lifted enormous, saw-toothed mountains.  They stood out against a sapphire sky with extraordinary vividness, with remarkable brilliancy of color, with an austere dignity.

Hollister put his arm around the girl.  She nestled close to him.  A little sigh escaped her lips.

“What is it, Doris?”

“I was just remembering how I lay awake last night,” she said, “thinking, thinking until my brain seemed like some sort of machine that would run on and on grinding out thoughts till I was worn out.”

“What about?” he asked.

“About you and myself,” she said simply.  “About what is ahead of us.  I think I was a little bit afraid.”

“Of me?”

“Oh, no,” she tightened her grip on his hand.  “I can’t imagine myself being afraid of you.  I like you too much.  But—­but—­well, I was thinking of myself, really; of myself in relation to you.  I couldn’t help seeing myself as a handicap.  I could see you beginning to chafe finally under the burden of a blind wife, growing impatient at my helplessness—­which you do not yet realize—­and in the end—­oh, well, one can think all sorts of things in spite of a resolution not to think.”

It stung Hollister.

“Good God,” he cried, “you don’t realize it’s only the fact you can’t see me that makes it possible.  Why, I’ve clutched at you the way a drowning man clutches at anything.  That I should get tired of you, feel you as a burden—­it’s unthinkable.  I’m thankful you’re blind.  I shall always be glad you can’t see.  If you could—­what sort of picture of me have you in your mind?”