First-principles quantum chemical techniques on cluster models have been used to investigate the photoabsorption of the peroxide linkage defect in silicate glasses. The effects of geometry, basis sets, and cluster size have been considered carefully to derive converged values for the low-lying excitation energies. The lowest singlet-to-singlet transition is a weak absorption at 5.5 eV. A stronger valence absorption occurs at 6.8 eV.