Here Madame Bizot and her daughter, and the baby, awaited us! And in the creature's tiny hand was a bunch of violets. This was the first time Alathea smiled. She bent and kissed the wee face. These people know and love her. I stayed behind a few moments to express my substantial appreciation of their friendly interest. Burton had been beside the chauffeur to help me in and out, and while we had been driving Alathea had not spoken a word. She had turned from me, and her little body was drawn back as far in the corner as possible. My own emotions were queer. I did not feel actually excited. I felt just as I used when we were going to take up a new position on the line where great watchfulness would be necessary to succeed. The maid Alathea had engaged arrived in the morning, and I had had the loveliest flowers put in all the rooms. Pierre intended to outdo himself for the wedding _déjeuner_, I knew, and Burton had been able to find somewhere a really respectable looking footman, not too obviously wounded. Alathea handed me my crutch as we got out of the lift. Perhaps she thinks this is going to be one of her new duties! We went straight into the sitting-room and I sat down in my chair. Her maid, named Henriette, had taken her cloak and hat in the hall, and I suppose from sheer nervousness, 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.