Yet I've never been and am not now conscious of any
regrets. I don't feel ashamed. I don't feel that I have sinned. I
merely grasped the only chance, the only possible chance that was in
reach. That's all you did. As far as you and I are concerned, there
isn't any question of blame."
"Are you sure," she asked point-blank, "that your face will make any
difference to Doris?"
"How can it help?" he replied gloomily. "If you had your eyes shut and
were holding in your hands what you thought was a pretty bird and
suddenly opened your eyes and saw it was a toad, wouldn't you recoil?"
"Your simile is no good. If Doris really loved you, it was not because
she pictured you as a pretty bird. If she could love you without
seeing you, if you appealed to her, why should your marred face make
her turn away from you?"
But Hollister could not explain his feeling, his deep dread of that
which seemed no remote possibility but something inevitable and very
near at hand. He did not want pity. He did not want to be merely
endured. He sat silent, thinking of those things, inwardly protesting
against this miraculous recovery of sight which meant so great a boon
to his wife and contained such fearful possibilities of misery for
himself.
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