at is dark." He turned to Lucilla. "Say," he
asked. "Is your favorite colors among these things here?"

She passed by the hat in contempt; looked at the pen-wiper, and put it
down; looked at the sheet of paper, and put it down; hesitated--and again
shut her eyes.

"No!" cried Grosse. "I won't have it! How dare you blind yourself, in the
presence of Me? What! I give you back your sights, and you go shut your
eyes. Open them--or I will put you in the corner like a naughty girls.
Your favorite colors? Now, now, now!"

She opened her eyes (very unwillingly), and looked once more at the
pen-wiper and the paper.

"I see nothing as bright as my favorite colors here," she said.

Grosse held up the sheet of paper, and pressed the question without
mercy.

"What! is white, whiter than this?"

"Fifty thousand times whiter than that!"

"Goot. Now mind! This paper is white," (he snatched her handkerchief out
of her apron-pocket). "This handkerchief is white, too; whitest of white,
both of them. First lesson, my lofe! Here in my hands is your favorite
colors, in the time when you were blind."

"_Those!_" she exclaimed, pointing to the paper and the handkerchief,
with a look of blank disappointment as he dropped them on the table. She
turned over the pen-wiper and the hat, and looked round at me. Grosse,
waiting to try another experiment, left it to me to answer. The result,
in both cases, was the same as in the cases of the sheet of paper and the
handkerchief. Scarlet was not half as red--black, not one-hundredth part
as black--as her imagination had figured them to her, in the days when
she was blind. Still, as to this last color--as to black--she could feel
some little encouragement. It had affected her disagreeably (just as poor
Oscar's face had affected her), though she had not actually known it for
the color that she disliked. She made an effort, poor child, to assert
herself, against her merciless surgeon-teacher. "I didn't know it was
black," she said. "But I hated the sight of it, for all that."

She tried, as she spoke, to toss the hat on to a chair, standing close
by her--and threw it instead, high above the back of the chair, against
the wall, at least six feet away from the object at which she had aimed.
"I am a helpless fool!" she burst out; her face flushing crimson with
mortification. "Don't let Oscar see me! I can't bear the thought of
making myself ridiculous before _him!_ He is coming here," she added,
tu