Basil Santoine, always held back and always watched and obliged to submit to guard even of women in petty matters because of his blindness, held one thing dearer far than life—and that thing was the trust which other men reposed in him. Since it was that trust which was threatened, the impulse now, in that danger, to act for himself and not be protected and pushed back by any one who merely could see, controlled him.
He put his hand on the rail and started to descend the stairs. He was almost steady in step and he had firm grasp on the rail; he noticed that now to wonder at it. When he had aroused at the sound of firing, his blindness, as always when something was happening about him, was obtruded upon him. He felt helpless because he was blind, not because he had been injured. He had forgotten entirely that for almost two weeks he had not stirred from bed; he had risen and stood and walked, without staggering, to the door and to the top of the stairs before, now, he remembered. So what he already had done showed him that he had merely again to put his injury from his mind and he could go on. He went down the stairs almost steadily.
There was still no sound or any evidence of any one below. The gases of the firing were clearing away; the blind man could feel the slight breeze which came in through the windows of his bedroom and went with him down the stairs; and now, as he reached the lower steps, there was no other sound in the room but the tread of the blind man's bare feet on the stairs. This sound was slight, but enough to attract attention in the silence there. Santoine halted on the next to the last step—the blind count stairs, and he had gone down twenty-one—and realized fully his futility;
