The Blind Man

Maurice didn't think much or worry much. While he had the power of touch, he was happy without sight.

Isabel Pervin was listening for two sounds - for the sound of wheels on the drive outside and for the noise of her husband's footsteps in the hall. It was the late afternoon of a rainy November day. Her dearest and oldest friend was on his way from the station. Her husband, who had been blinded in the war in France, was outside somewhere.

Maurice had been home for a year now. He was badly scared and totally blind, but they had been very happy. Grange Farm was Maurice's place. The farm workers lived at the back of the house, while Isabel lived with her husband in the comfortable rooms at the front. They had spent most of their time alone together since his return. They talked and sang and read, together. She wrote short pieces for a newspaper and he did some work on the farm - simple work, it is true, but it gave him satisfaction. He milked the cows and looked after the pigs and horses. Life was still very full for the blind man, peaceful in darkness. With his wife, he had a whole world, rich and real.

But sometimes their happiness left them. In that silent house, Isabel sometimes felt she was going crazy. And sometimes her husband became despairing. She tried then to force the old cheerfulness to continue bat the effort was almost too much for her. At such times, she would give anything, anything, to escape.

She looked for a way out. She invited friends. She tried to give her husband some further connection with the outside world. But it was no good.

Nobody could understand the depth of the experiences that they had shared in the past year.

But now, in a few weeks' time, her second baby would be born. The first had died while her husband was in France. She looked forward with pleasure to the coming of the second, but she also felt a little anxious. The child would take her love and attention. And then, what about Maurice? What would he do?

It was at this time that Isabel's old friend, Bertie Reid,, wrote to her. All her life he had been her friend - like a brother, but better than her own brothers. She loved him, though not in the same way as the man she had chosen to marry.