Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/145

Rh dark in the room—the first thing I thought of was a light. But she—she just sat down and be gan to talk. She had forgot to light the gas."

The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she shivered slightly.

"Can you imagine it ?" she asked. "She chatted on—quite cheerfully as I remember it. And I—I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and trembly and sick with the awful horror of blind— ness, for the first time in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be blind— just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the blackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it had never oc curred to her to light a lamp—then for the first time—I knew—I knew."

Again she stopped, and Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had never experienced before— a thrill at a woman's near presence.

"That's what I ask of a writer," she said, "that he make me feel for his people as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It need not be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy—it may be for one whose heart is as glad as a May