“By God!” said Charles Bannister furiously, “I wish I were a few years younger. I’d thrash you for saying that!” As he spoke, Esther rose from her chair, and felt her way out of the room. “You see,” said Bannister, watching her exit, nearly beside himself, “you see what you do with your filthy tongue! Why can’t you keep quiet?”

Grant stared at him, no longer angry or malicious, but amazed at the sense of his words. None of this added up … Then, as he looked, he saw a spectacular blush appear on the other man’s face, rising above his collar and suffusing his neck, cheeks, and brow in a rich wave of red. He looked like a small boy who has made some violently uncouth noise in church. Thereafter Bannister rose swiftly to his feet, muttered something, and shambled from the room without another word.

They neither of them referred to this occasion again. Grant, indeed, felt rather ashamed of himself: he did not in the least want to talk like that about Esther, even to himself … He supposed that Charles Bannister had the same feeling, and that some queer drunken inconsequence had made him choose the words he did.

The words themselves had not made sense, but the instinct behind them was clear and valid enough … Grant did not think about it again until much later.

The second item concerned himself and Esther alone.

Grant had now taken to studying Esther as closely as he could: he told himself that it was a reporter’s interest, he knew it was something like a lover’s. He spent as much time as possible alone with her, especially did he enjoy sitting opposite her in the comfortable silence of the suite, watching her reading Braille or doing embroidery at which she was now expert. It gave to their time together a gentle domestic significance which he found very attractive; and in some strange, undefined manner he received the impression that she liked it that way herself.

Indeed, if the idea had not been nonsensical, he would have said that often she was watching him covertly, and enjoying his company as he did hers. Now and then, with no one to hear, he would say aloud: “You’re lovely, Esther. I wish I could tell you about it”; and as if the thought could communicate itself to her, she seemed to react to his words, and her face would soften to a marvellous sweetness. Once he said: “I’d like to kiss you. I will, too, some day …” And it was as if she could hear the loving, urgent words, so shyly confused did her whole face and manner become.

One day, after asking Mrs Bannister to explain the plan to her, he took Esther for a walk, alone, in Central Park. Her hand in his was soft and close; as they strolled along slowly, they might have been normal lovers, normally happy. When they returned to the hotel, Esther passed a message of special thanks to him, using her sign language through Mrs Bannister. Whenever Grant was there, Esther would not use the frightening, uncoordinated speech which she now produced for the entertainment of the public.