She loved the
beautiful too well, perfection of line and form and color. Restored
sight must alter her world; her conception of him must become
transformed. The magic of the unseen would lose its glamor. All that
he meant to her as a man, a lover, a husband, must be stripped bare of
the kindly illusion that blindness had wrapped him in. Even if she did
not shrink in amazed reluctance at first sight, she must soon cease to
have for him any keener emotion than a tolerant pity. And Hollister
did not want that. He would not take it as a gift--not from Doris; he
could not.
Love, home, all that sweet companionship which he had gained, the
curious man-pride he had in that morsel of humanity that was his
son,--he wondered if he were to see all these slowly or swiftly
withdrawn from him?
Well, he would soon know. He stood up and looked far along the valley.
Suddenly it seemed a malevolent place, oppressive, threatening, grim
in spite of its beauty. It seemed as if something had been lurking
there ready to strike. The fire had swept away his timber.
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