Don't be afraid of the dark." She tousled his hair tolerantly. "I've never known a man who wasn't scared of more things than I was.

God is so cruel," she murmured reflectively, as though answering him."Yes," he admitted, from the vantage point of going blind. "Though maybe people are kinder if He made them that way.""You've run with a different crowd. Rich people are nicer to rich people.""Sure. Yes. That's why I've washed up here. Rich people couldn't have been nicer to me.

Did you have to understand life to plunge in? Even kindness, when he encountered it, was a riddle half the time. If you walked into a door and bloodied your nose, it was one thing, but empathy for handicaps had never been his thing when he himself had none. Empathy had been for people of good cheer.

Often eating took considerable extra time, since he could hardly see his food, groping with a fork or spoon, enforcedly omnivorous. "Blind men wear spotted pants," Dorothy teased, telling him to wash his...