ily as I could have gone
to her myself if I had tried.

"Another wager-bet!" cried Grosse, still standing behind her, and
calling to me. "Twenty thousand pounds this time to a fourpennies-bit.
_She has shut her eyes to get to you._ Hey!"

It was true--she had blindfolded herself! With her eyes closed, she
could measure to a hair's breadth the distance which, with her eyes
opened, she was perfectly incompetent to calculate! Detected by both of
us, she sat down, poor dear, with a sigh of despair. "Was it worth
while," she said to me sadly, "to go through the operation for _this?_"

Grosse joined us at our end of the room.

"All in goot time," he said. "Patience--and these helpless eyes of yours
will learn. Soh! I shall begin to teach them now. You have got your own
notions--hey?--about this colors and that? When you were blind, did you
think what would be your favorite colors if you could see? You did? Which
colors is it? Tell me. Come!"

"White first," she answered. "Then scarlet."

Grosse paused, and considered.

"White, I understand," he said. "White is the fancy of a young girls. But
why scarlets? Could you see scarlets when you were blind?"

"Almost," she answered, "if it was bright enough. I used to feel
something pass before my eyes when scarlet was shown to me."

"In these cataracts-cases, it is constantly scarlets that they almost
see," muttered Grosse to himself. "There must be reason for this--and I
must find him." He went on with his questions to Lucilla. "And the colors
you hate most--which is _he?_"

"Black."

Grosse nodded his head approvingly. "I thought so," he said. "It is
always black that they hate. For this also there must be reason--and I
must find _him._"

Having expressed that resolution, he approached the writing-table, and
took a sheet of paper out of the case, and a circular pen-wiper of
scarlet cloth out of the inkstand. After that, he looked about him;
waddled back to the other end of the room; and fetched the black felt hat
in which he had traveled from London. He ranged the hat, the paper, and
the pen-wiper in a row. Before he could put his next question to her, she
pointed to the hat with a gesture of disapproval.

"Take it away," she said. "I don't like that."

Grosse stopped me before I could speak.

"Wait a little," he whispered in my ear. "It is not quite so wonderful as
you think. These blind peoples, when they first see, have all alike the
same hatred of anything wh