She heard Durrance laugh light-heartedly, and she listened to the words he spoke.

She could hear them plainly now, though she could not see the man who spoke them.

He sat in the shadows.
"I began to find out," he was saying, "even on that first afternoon at Hill Street two months ago, that there was only friendship on your side.
My blindness helped me.

With your face and your eyes in view I should have believed without question just what you wished me to believe.

But you had no longer those defences.