The Wiles of the Wicked. Le Queux William

I felt his fingers open my eyelids wide, and knew that he was gazing into my eyes through one of those glasses like other oculists had used. He took a long time over the right eye, which he examined first, then having apparently satisfied himself, he opened the left, felt it carefully, and touched the surface, of the eyeball, causing me a twinge of pain.

      “As I thought!” he ejaculated when he had finished. “As I thought! A slight operation only is necessary. The specialists whom you consulted were wrong in their conclusions. They have all three made an error which is very easy to make, yet it might have deprived you of sight for your whole life.”

      “What!” I cried, in sudden enthusiasm. “Do you mean to tell me solemnly that you can perform a miracle? – that you can restore my sight to me?”

      “I tell you, sir,” he answered quite calmly, “that if you will undergo a small operation, and afterwards subject yourself to a course of treatment, in a fortnight – or, say three weeks – you will again open your eyes and look upon the world.”

      His words were certainly startling to me, shut out so long from all the pleasures of life. This stranger promised me a new existence, a world of light and movement, of colour, and of all the interests which combine to make life worth living. At first I was inclined to scorn this statement of his, yet so solemnly had he uttered it, and with such an air of confidence, that I became half convinced that he was more than a mere quack.

      “Your words arouse within me a new interest,” I said. “When do you propose this operation?”

      “To-morrow, if you will.”

      “Will it be painful?”

      “Not very – a slight twinge, that’s all.”

      I remained again in doubt. He noticed my hesitation, and urged me to submit.

      But my natural caution asserted itself, and I felt disinclined to place myself in the hands of one of whose bona fides I knew absolutely nothing.

      As politely as I could I told him this, but he merely replied —

      “I have been sent by the lady whom we both know as Edna. Have you no confidence in her desire to assist you?”

      “Certainly I have.”

      “She has already explained to me that you have promised to carry out her wishes. It is at her urgent request that I have come to you with the object of giving you back your sight.”

      “She wishes me to submit to the experiment?”

      “Pardon me. It is no experiment,” he said. “She desires you to submit yourself to my treatment. If you do, I have entire confidence that in a week or so you will see almost as well as I do.”