"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."