It was the one thing which remained for him now--to
make it easy for her.
This was firmly fixed in his mind when he told her that morning he wanted
to talk to her about something and asked her to come into the library. He
was sure he had himself well in hand; the words were upon his lips.
And then when he said: "I want to tell you something, dear--something
that will hurt you very much. I never wanted to hurt you; I can not help
it now,"--when he had said that, and she, with quick response to the
sorrow in his voice, had knelt beside him, her arms about his neck,
something,--the feel of her arms, the knowing there was some one now to
help him--swept away the words and his broken-hearted cry had been: "Oh,
sweetheart--help me! I'm going blind!"
Those first moments took from her something of youth and gladness she
would never regain. First frozen with horror, then clinging to him
wildly, sobbing that it could not be so--that Dr. Parkman, some one,
would do something about it; protesting in a fierce outburst of the love
which rose within her that it did not matter, that she would make it all
up to him--their love make it right--in one moment stricken dumb as
comprehension of it grew upon her, in another wildly defying fate, but
always clinging to him, holding him so close, trying, though frightened
and broken, to stand between him and the awful thing as the mother would
stand between the child and its destroyer, Ernestine left with that
hour things never to be claimed again.
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