“Come in and have a cup of tea and tell me the latest Vancouver scandal,” Lawanne urged, when they beached the canoe.

Hollister assented.  He was as well there as anywhere.  If there were an antidote in human intercourse for what afflicted him, that antidote lay in Archie Lawanne.  There was no false sentiment in Lawanne.  He did not judge altogether by externals.  His was an understanding, curiously penetrating intelligence.  Hollister could always be himself with Lawanne.  He sat down on the grass before the cabin and smoked while Lawanne looked over his letters.  The Chinese boy brought tea and sandwiches and cake on a tray.

“Mrs. Hollister is recovering her sight?” Lawanne asked at length.

Hollister nodded.

“Complete normal sight?”

Hollister nodded again.

“You don’t seem overly cheerful about it,” Lawanne said slowly.

“You aren’t stupid,” Hollister replied.  “Put yourself in my place.”

It was Lawanne’s turn to indicate comprehension and assent by a nod.  He looked at Hollister appraisingly, thoughtfully.

“She gains the privilege of seeing again.  You lose—­what?  Are you sure you stand to lose anything—­or is it simply a fear of what you may lose?”

“What can I expect?” Hollister muttered.  “My face is bound to be a shock.  I don’t know how she’ll take it.  And if when she sees me she can’t stand me—­isn’t that enough?”

“I shouldn’t worry, if I were you,” Lawanne encouraged.  “Your wife is a little different from the ordinary run of women, I think.  And, take it from me, no woman loves her husband for his Grecian profile alone.  Nine times out of ten a man’s looks have nothing to do with what a woman thinks of him, that is if she really knows him; whereas with a man it is usually the other way about, until he learns by experience that beauty isn’t the whole works—­which a clever woman knows instinctively.”

“Women shy away from the grotesque, the unpleasant,” Hollister declared.  “You know they do.  I had proof of that pretty well over two years.  So do men, for that matter.  But the women are the worst.  I’ve seen them look at me as if I were a loathsome thing.”

“Oh, rats,” Lawanne returned irritably.  “You’re hyper-sensitive about that face of yours.  The women—­well, take Mrs. Bland as an example.  I don’t see that the condition of your face makes any great difference to her.  It doesn’t appear to arouse any profound distaste on her part.”

Hollister could not counter that.  But it was an argument which carried no weight with him.  For if Myra could look at him without a qualm, Hollister knew it must be because her mind never quite relinquished the impression of him as he used to be in the old days.  And Doris had nothing like that to mitigate the sweeping impression of first sight, which Hollister feared with a fear he could not shake off by any effort of his will.