Every nerve in him revolted. "I have fallen
low enough already. I'm not going to beg for pity. Besides, it would be cruel
to her." He strove to put Maisie out of his thoughts; but the blind have many
opportunities for thinking, and as the tides of his strength came back to him
in the long employless days of dead darkness, Dick's soul was troubled to the
core. Another letter, and another, came from Maisie. Then there was silence,
and Dick sat by the window, the pulse of summer in the air, and pictured her
being won by another man, stronger than himself. His imagination, the keener
for the dark background it worked against, spared him no single detail that
might send him raging up and down the studio, to stumble over the stove that
seemed to be in four places at once. Worst of all, tobacco would not taste in
the darkness. The arrogance of the man had disappeared, and in its place were
settled despair that Torpenhow knew, and blind passion that Dick confided to
his pillow at night. The intervals between the paroxysms were filled with
intolerable waiting and the weight of intolerable darkness.
"Come out into the Park," said Torpenhow. "You haven't stirred out since the
beginning of things."
"What's the use? There's no movement in the dark; and, besides,"--he paused
irresolutely at the head of the stairs,--"something will run over me.
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