It was the irrepressible question in this grasp that stopped on my lips all sound of salutation.

She had mistaken my entrance for that of another person, a pair of lips without a moustache.

She was feeling me to see who I was! With the perception of this and of her not seeing me I sat gaping at her and at the wild word that didn't come, the right word to express or to disguise my dismay.

What was the right word to commemorate one's sudden discovery, at the very moment too at which one had been most encouraged to count on better things, that one's dear old friend had gone blind?
Before the answer to this question dropped upon me--and the moving moments, though few, seemed many--I heard, with the sound of voices, the click of the attendant's key on the other side of the door.

Poor Flora heard also and on hearing, still with her hand on my arm, brightened again as I had a minute since seen her brighten across the house: she had the sense of the return of the person she had taken me for--the person with the right pair of lips, as to whom I was for that matter much more in the dark than she.