that the voices she had heard earlier had come from rooms on the left of
the door, and she felt her way to the entrance of the bedchamber, and
then went in without hesitation. Bending very low, so that her hands
touched the floor from time to time, she crept along, feeling for the
body she expected to find. Suddenly she started and stood upright in an
instant. She had heard a deep sigh in the room, not far off.

She listened intently, but even her ears could detect no sound after
that. She was a little frightened, not with any supernatural fear, for
the blind, who live in the dark for ever, are generally singularly
exempt from such terrors, but because she had thought herself alone with
the dead man, and did not wish to be discovered.

"Who is here?" she asked quickly, but there was no answer out of the
dead stillness.

She stood quite still a few seconds and then crept forward again,
bending down and feeling before her along the floor. A moment later her
hand touched velvet, and she knew that she had found what she sought.
With a low moan she fell upon her knees and felt for the cold hand that
lay stretched out upon the marble pavement beyond the thick carpet. Her
hand followed the arm, reached the shoulder and then the face. Her
fingers fluttered lightly upon the features, while her own heart almost
stood still She felt no horror of death, though she had never been near
a dead person before; and those who were fond of her had allowed her to
feel their features with her gentle hands, and she knew beauty through
her touch, by its shape. Though her heart was breaking, she had felt
that once, before it was too late, she must know the face she had long
loved in dreams. Her longing satisfied, her grief broke out again, and
she let herself fall her length upon the floor beside Don John, one arm