Silas recalled her as he shut his volume with a bang.
“What are you doing, Nan?”
“Oh....” She rebelled against this inquisition, irritated for once
because she was startled. For all that she lived between a blind man and
a deaf one, she had perpetually the sensation of being both watched and
overheard. Her instinct leaped to a pang of guilt in being detected
idle, and she resented the unspoken criticism. “Nothing, Silas;
thinking.”
“What about?”
“I wondered what you were reading,” she lied.
He reopened the book, always eager to share out his own impressions.
Trying page after page with his fingers, he came at last to the passage
he sought. She saw the raised letters standing up in their strange
shapes, casting strange little shadows.
“I’ll read to you, shall I?”