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talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind, and reproved him so
impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that covered
their cosmic casserole that he almost doubted whether indeed
he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead.
So Nunez became a citizen of the Country of the Blind, and
these people ceased to be a generalised people and became
individualities to him, and familiar to him, while the world beyond
the mountains became more and more remote and unreal. There was
Yacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was Pedro,
Yacob's nephew; and there was Medina-sarote, who was the youngest
daughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of the
blind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying,
glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty,
but Nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most
beautiful thing in the whole creation. Her closed eyelids were
not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as
though they might open again at any moment; and she had long
eyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. And her
voice was weak and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley
swains. So that she had no lover.
There came a time when Nunez thought that, could he win her,
he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his
days.
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