is?"

I eagerly approached Lucilla. There was still a little dimness left in
her eyes. I noticed also that they moved to and fro restlessly, and (at
times) wildly. But, oh, the bright change in her! the new life of beauty
which the new sense had bestowed on her already! Her smile, always
charming, now caught light from her lips, and spread its gentle
fascination over all her face. It was impossible not to long to kiss her.
I advanced to congratulate, to embrace her. Grosse stepped forward, and
checked me.

"No," he said. "Walk your ways to the odder end of the rooms--and let us
see if _she_ can go to _you._"

Like all other people, knowing no more of the subject than I knew, I had
no idea of the pitiably helpless manner in which the restored sense of
sight struggles to assert itself, in persons who have been blind for
life. In such cases, the effort of the eyes that are first learning to
see, is like the effort of the limbs when a child is first learning to
walk. But for Grosse's odd way of taking it, the scene which I was now to
witness would have been painful in the last degree. My poor
Lucilla--instead of filling me with joy, as I had anticipated--would I
really believe have wrung my heart, and have made me burst out crying.

"Now!" said Grosse, laying one hand on Lucilla's arm, while he pointed to
me with the other. "There she stands. Can you go to her?"

"Of course I can!"

"I lay you a bet-wager you can _not!_ Ten thausand pounds to six pennies.
Done-done. Now try!"

She answered by a little gesture of defiance, and took three hasty steps
forward. Bewildered and frightened, she stopped suddenly at the third
step--before she had advanced half the way from her end of the room to
mine.

"I saw her here," she said, pointing down to the spot on which she was
standing; and appealing piteously to Grosse. "I see her now--and I don't
know where she is! She is so near, I feel as if she touched my eyes--and
yet" (she advanced another step, and clutched with her hands at the empty
air)--"and yet, I can't get near enough to take hold of her. Oh! what
does it mean? what does it mean?"

"It means--pay me my six pennies!" said Grosse. "The wager-bet is mine!"

She resented his laughing at her, with an obstinate shake of her head,
and an angry knitting of her pretty eyebrows.

"Wait a little," she said. "You shan't win quite so easily as that. I
will get to her yet!"

She came straight to me in a moment--just as eas