sness, and to cover the first awkward moments,
Alathea buried her face in the big bowl of roses on a table near another
arm chair, before she sat down in it.

"What lovely flowers!" she said. They were the first words she had
spoken to me directly.

"I wondered what would be your favorites. You must tell me for the
future. I just had roses because they happen to be mine."

"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."

Silence.

The desire to punish her physically, beat her, make her obey me, was the
only thing I felt. A nice emotion for a wedding day!

"Do you mean to wear them all the time, even when we go out in the
world?" I asked when I could control my voice.

"Probably."

"Very well then, I consider you are breaking the bargain in spirit, if
not in the letter. You, yourself, said you were going to be my permanent
secretary--no secretary in the world would insist upon doing something
she knew to be a great irritation to her employer."

Silence.

"You are only lowering yourself in my estimation by showing this
obstinacy. Since we have now to live together, I would rather not have
to grow to despise you for childishness."

She started to her feet, and with violence threw the glasses on to the
table. Her beautiful eyes flashed at me; the lashes are that peculiar
curly k