The Darkness Deepens

Richard was completely crushed, and without noticing any one he
sat hour after hour, day after day, night after night, always in
one place, near the head of the bed, his hands folded submissively
together, and his sightless eyes fixed upon the pillow, where he
knew Edith was, with a hopeless, subdued expression touching to
witness.

He did not weep, but his dry, red eyes, fastened always
upon the same point, told of sealed fountains where the hot tears
were constantly welling up, and failing to find egress without,
fell upon the bruised heart, which blistered and burned beneath
their touch, but felt no relief. It was in vain they tried to
persuade him to leave the room; he turned a deaf ear to their
entreaties, and the physician was beginning to fear for his
reason, when crazy Nina came to his aid, and laying her moist hand
upon his said to him, not imploringly, but commandingly, "Come
with me."

There was a moment's hesitation, and then Richard followed her out
into the open air, sitting where she bade him sit, and offering no
resistance when she perched herself upon his knee and passed her
arm around his neck.

"Make him cry, can't you? That will do him good," whispered
Victor, who had come out with them.

Nina knew that better than himself. SHE remembered the time when
the sight of Edith had wrung from her torrents of tears, cooling
her burning brow, and proving a blessed relief, the good effects
of which were visible yet. And now it was her task to make the
blind man cry. She recognized something familiar in the hard,
stony expression of his face, something which brought back the
Asylum, with all its dreaded horrors. She had seen strong men
there look just as he was looking. Dr. Griswold had called them
crazy, and knowing well what that word implied she would save
Richard from so sad a fate.