An unattractive young man with buck teeth from a village in Sri Lanka spies on the local girls, and is generally an object of ridicule among the villagers He is defended by his mother, who rescues him from several embarrassing situations, but even she is driven to admit that only a blind girl could love him He then meets a blind girl, fails in love with her and marries her But sometimes he wonders if perhaps she can see, especially when she talks about the beauty of the world about the village He decides to test whether she is genuinely blind, but reaches no conclusions Then he hears of a famous hermit who has the gift of healing, and they set out to find him The hermit warns her that he once cured a blind girl, then blinded her again when she refused his advances She braves the threat, and now the husband's only concern is for her reaction when she first sets eyes on him...