is gone I can't say. But Nina's is."

"Yes, and there's no way to bring it back that won't sacrifice her
friend. We can't turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we? But
fancy Nina's not having _seen_!" Mrs. Munden exclaimed.

"She doesn't see now," I answered. "She can't, I'm certain, make out
what we mean. The woman, for _her_ still, is just what she always was.
But she has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she
wavers and gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort. Her blow was
to see the attention of the world deviate."

"All the same I don't think, you know," my interlocutress said, "that
Nina will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she'll ever make
her one. That isn't the way it will happen, for she's exactly as
conscientious as Mrs. Brash."

"Then what is the way?" I asked.

"It will just happen in silence."

"And what will 'it,' as you call it, be?"

"Isn't that what we want really to see?"

"Well," I replied after a turn or two about, "whether we want it or not
it's exactly what we _shall_ see; which is a reason the more for
fancying, between the pair there--in the quiet exquisite house, and full
of superiorities and suppressions as they both are--the extraordinary
situation. If I said just now that it's too late to do anything but