“Perhaps not a very clear one,” the girl answered slowly.  “But I hear your voice, and it is a pleasant one.  I feel your touch, and there is something there that moves me in the oddest way.  I know that you are a big man and strong.  Of course I don’t know whether your eyes are blue or brown, whether your hair is fair or dark—­and I don’t care.  As for your face I can’t possibly imagine it as terrible, unless you were angry.  What are scars?  Nothing, nothing.  I can’t see them.  It wouldn’t make any difference if I could.”

“It would,” he muttered.  “I’m afraid it would.”

Doris shook her head.  She looked up at him, with that peculiarly direct, intent gaze which always gave him the impression that she did see.  Her eyes, the soft gray of a summer rain cloud—­no one would have guessed them sightless.  They seemed to see, to be expressive, to glow and soften.

She lifted a hand to Hollister’s face.  He did not shrink while those soft fingers went exploring the devastation wrought by the exploding shell.  They touched caressingly the scarred and vivid flesh.  And they finished with a gentle pat on his cheek and a momentary, kittenish rumpling of his hair.

“I cannot find so very much amiss,” she said.  “Your nose is a bit awry, and there is a hollow in one cheek.  I can feel scars.  What does it matter?  A man is what he thinks and feels and does.  I am the maimed one, really.  There is so much I can’t do, Bob.  You don’t realize it yet.  And we won’t always be living this way, sitting idle on the beach, going to a show, having tea in the Granada.  I used to run and swim and climb hills.  I could have gone anywhere with you—­done anything—­been as good a mate as any primitive woman.  But my wings are clipped.  I can only get about in familiar surroundings.  And sometimes it grows intolerable.  I rebel.  I rave—­and wish I were dead.  And if I thought I was hampering you, and you were beginning to regret you had married me—­why, I couldn’t bear it.  That’s what my brain was buzzing with last night.”

“Do any of those things strike you as serious obstacles now—­when I have my arms around you?” Hollister demanded.

She shook her head.

“No.  Really and truly right now I’m perfectly willing to take any sort of chance on the future—­if you’re in it,” she said thoughtfully.  “That’s the sort of effect you have on me.  I suppose that’s natural enough.”

“Then we feel precisely the same,” Hollister declared.  “And you are not to have any more doubts about me.  I tell you, Doris, that besides wanting you, I need you.  I can be your eyes.  And for me, you will be like a compass to a sailor in a fog—­something to steer a course by.  So let’s stop talking about whether we’re going to take the plunge.  Let’s talk about how we’re going to live, and where.”

A whimsical expression tippled across the girl’s face, a mixture of tenderness and mischief.