He looked at Durrance--a man so trained to vigour and
activity that his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than
an accident of the country in which he lived; a man, too, who came to
the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who comes
into an inheritance; a man to whom these desolate tracts were home, and
the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads merely the other
places; and he understood the magnitude of the calamity which had
befallen him. Therefore he was most anxious to know more of this girl
who wrote to Durrance from Donegal, and to gather from her letters, as
from a mirror in which her image was reflected, some speculation as to
her character. For if she failed, what had this friend of his any longer
left?
"You would like to hear them, I expect," he insisted. "You have been
away eight weeks." And he was interrupted by a harsh laugh.
"Do you know what I was thinking when I stopped you?" said Durrance.
"Why, that I would read the letters after you had gone. It takes time to
get used to being blind after your eyes have served you pretty well all
your life." And his voice shook ever so little. "You will have to help
me to answer them, Calder.
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