But Nunez's manner of receiving the good news struck him as
being cold and disappointing.
"One might think," he said, "from the tone you take that you
did not care for my daughter."
It was Medina-sarote who persuaded Nunez to face the blind
surgeons.
"YOU do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of
sight?"
She shook her head.
"My world is sight."
Her head drooped lower.
"There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little
things--the flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light and
softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting dawn of
clouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is YOU. For
you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face,
your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . .
. . It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to
you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you,
and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and
stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your
imaginations stoop . . . NO; YOU would not have me do that?"
A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left
the thing a question.
"I wish," she said, "sometimes--" She paused.
"Yes?" he said, a little apprehensively.
"I wish sometimes--you would not talk like that."
"Like what?"
"I know it's pretty--it's your imagination.
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