“I suppose you don’t care much about poetry?” she said, raising her head so suddenly that the light of her eyes quite dazzled him. “It would be too sentimental for you. But if you did, I could tell you some lines that would quite cover the ground.”
The Philosopher was conscious of an uncomfortable nervousness.
“If you like,” he answered, rather slowly. “But poetry is not in my line.”
“I know it isn’t,” she agreed emphatically. “But just listen!”
And in a soft musical voice she repeated slowly and with well-modulated emphasis and intonation:
“Hence pageant history!--hence gilded cheat! Swart planet in the universe of deeds!”
“Keats!” murmured the Philosopher, dreamily. “Honey and water!”
“Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shores of memory! Many old rotten-timbered boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom magnified To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride, And golden-keeled, is left unlaunched and dry! But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly About the great Athenian admiral’s mast The Indus with his Macedonian numbers? Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers The glutted Cyclops, what care?...”
“Not in the least!” interposed the Philosopher. “What do you know about ‘glutted Cyclops’?”
“Juliet leaning Amid her window-flowers--sighing--weaning Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow, Doth more avail than these: ...”
“Ah! Of course you like that,” interrupted the Philosopher.
“the silver flow Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den, Are things to brood on with more urgency Than the death-day of empires.”
The sweet voice ceased. The Philosopher’s hand inadvertently fell at his side and came in contact with a deliciously soft arm.
“Have you done?” he enquired, in mild accents.
“Well,” he observed, “you spoke your lines very prettily,--that’s all I can say. Your quotation is from ‘Endymion,’ and I suppose you realise that ‘Endymion’ is utterly spoilt by its excess of cloying sentimentality. Yet--”
Absent-mindedly he began to stroke the soft arm up and down with a light caress such as he would have bestowed on a child.
“What I should like to explain,” he said, with an argumentative air, “and what you women will never understand, is that any exaggeration of feeling is always bad form, both in literature and in life. You’ve got plenty of intelligence and you ought to grapple with and master this fact. Certain things are taken for granted and it is not necessary to dwell upon them. Outward displays of emotion should always be suppressed. The brave man hides his wound,--and of course in matters of love the one who says least loves most.”