Gone – but leaving many lasting things behind her: leaving tears, emotion, hopes, pity, love.

Dispersing to our homes, we remembered her as our own Esther, an Irish waif adopted by this city, given hope here, given contact at last with the outside world, by the loving care of a great woman.

That is all that need matter to us. Forget the ‘Esther Costello’ toys, forget the dressed up children and the stagey presentation. These are extras – new additions to our own central, simple figure.

May such things never obscure her, never spoil the Esther Costello we know, love, wonder at, and pray for.

This story, like Harry Grant’s first one of the year before, started a series of other manifestations that were a long time dying down. Esther was Time’s cover story, a couple of months later; she was named ‘Woman of the Year’ by another national magazine; her photograph adorned a hundred thousand calendars put out by a child care organization. Korean veterans named her ‘The Girl We Would Most Readily Give Our Eyes For’.

As a final accolade, her childhood history, her extraordinary progress, and her present pinnacle of love and fame, were condensed for eleven million people in a magazine specializing in potted profiles.

The article was entitled: ‘Blindness Can Be Fun.’

Chapter Eleven

The suite at the Bristol was wonderfully luxurious, by any standard: Mrs Bannister, no friend of England, was prepared to admit that where comfort was concerned, some British hotels could give America a smart sort of lesson. The sitting-room looked out over the west of London, allowing her a wide view of rooftops, the trees of green and distant Hyde Park, the hazy warmth of an English summer in town. When she turned from this view to the room again, its elegance and receptive colouring completed a picture with no flaw in it.

Even her husband, lolling deep in an armchair as if he had lived in the Bristol all his life, and Jack Lett, shirtsleeved, murdering a cigar as he paced up and down, could not spoil her sense of well-being. If she had to be in England, this was the town to be in, this was the hotel to stay at, this was the time of the year to make the visit.

It was after lunch: Esther was resting; there was no meeting that night, and therefore no more cares for that day. Lunch, as usual, had been a very good one. At that moment, in spite of the strenuous routine that underlay everything they did these days, in spite of one other factor that lay in the back of her mind, she wanted nothing changed.

Charles Bannister said: “Sit down, Jack, for God’s sake. You’re making me giddy.”

Jack Lett turned, on the ball of one foot, like a dancer. He looked, as he always did, bustling, energetic, forceful: the coiled mainspring of the Esther Costello enterprise. He was putting on weight, thought Charles Bannister, surveying him. And, by God, he could afford to …