The book dropped with a frightful thump on the platform floor.

Esther must have felt the impact, or else the book touched her foot, for her expression changed immediately. Her hands groped forwards inquiringly, and encountered the girl’s empty ones. There was upon her working face a look of such ruined despair that many people in the audience cried out at the sight of it.

The Mother Superior rose, as did Mrs Bannister. But it was the child herself who retrieved the whole moment, with sudden, moving grace. She took a pace forward, threw her arms round Esther, and hugged her fervently. Above her head, Esther’s face, hardly less childish, melted first into doubt and then into a delighted smile.

They stood embraced for a long moment, while the audience went off its head.

There was some element in the thunderous applause which now followed, that seemed to knit the whole occasion together into an ecstatic success. It was the sort of applause that tried to express everything. There was tremendous relief in it. There was pity for Esther, admiration for Mrs Bannister, and thanks for the child who had redeemed them all. There was a plea for forgiveness, because it was they who had been the promoters of all this long ordeal. There was, above everything else, love for Esther Costello, which they must demonstrate at all costs.

The applause filled the hall, growing, echoing. The audience began to move towards the platform, where Mrs Bannister, Esther, and the child now stood in a line together. Here and there, people in the first rows stretched out their hands, trying to touch them. Then those in front started to invade the platform itself, while the voices and the clapping still rose in great waves behind them.

It was as if, for this one moment, the whole human world was flowing towards Esther Costello, striving to reach the blind girl who was the adored centre of their lives. The tumult was still at its height when the Mother Superior gave the signal for the ceremony to end.

In the quiet of the Mother Superior’s office, the man – middle-aged, short, strongly-built – walked up and down with quick, energetic steps. It seemed as though only thus could he bear the imprisonment of four walls. Now he glanced at Esther, who sat quietly in a corner, now at Mrs Bannister, who faced him tiredly from the fireplace. He was in a state of tremendous nervous tension: fresh from the meeting, he had an exalted look, as if he knew himself to be a better man because of what he had just witnessed.

“I asked if I could see you alone,” he said. He had a tough, rasping voice, a voice of executive command, but now it had lost much of its authority, and seemed to be urging a cause that did not accord with toughness at all. “That was a wonderful experience for me. I have a little girl at school here” – he glanced again at Esther – “a little girl in full health, thank God.”