gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing
again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the
face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed
eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short
moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man
grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to
take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.

'You seem young,' he said quietly, at last.

The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.

'Your head seems tender, as if you were young,' Maurice repeated. 'So do
your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?--touch my scar.'

Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the
blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers
on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with
his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured
eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from
side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood
as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.

Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow,
and stood holding it in his own.

'Oh, my God' he said, 'we shall know each other now, shan't we? We shall
know each other now.'

Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his