"I like roses best too."
I was silent for quite two minutes. She tried to keep still, then I spoke, and I could hear a tone of authority in my voice.
"Alathea, again I ask you please to remove your glasses, as I told you before, I know that you wear them only so that I may not see your eyes, not for sight or light or anything. To keep them on is a little undignified and ridiculous now, and irritates me very much."
She colored and straightened herself.
"To remove my glasses was not part of the bargain. You should have made it a condition if you had wanted to impose it. I do not admit that you have the least right to ask me to take them off, and I prefer to wear them."
"For what possible reason?"
"I will not tell you."
I felt my temper rising. If I had not been a cripple I could not have resisted the temptation to rise and seize her in my arms, tear the d—— d things off! and punish her with a thousand kisses. As it was, I felt an inward rage. What a fool I had been not to have actually made the removal of them a sine qua non before I signed the contract!
"It is very ungenerous of you, and shows a spirit of hostility which I think we agreed that you would drop."