“Pooh!” said Blanche. “There’s only an animal in the room. We needn’t mind _him!_”
“I say!” exclaimed Arnold. “You’re as bitter, this morning, as Sir Patrick himself. What will you say to Me when we are married if you talk in that way of my friend?”
Blanche stole her hand into Arnold’s hand and gave it a little significant squeeze. “I shall always be nice to _you,_” she whispered--with a look that contained a host of pretty promises in itself. Arnold returned the look (Geoffrey was unquestionably in the way!). Their eyes met tenderly (why couldn’t the great awkward brute write his letters somewhere else?). With a faint little sigh, Blanche dropped resignedly into one of the comfortable arm-chairs--and asked once more for “some poetry,” in a voice that faltered softly, and with a color that was brighter than usual.
“Whose poetry am I to read?” inquired Arnold.
“Any body’s,” said Blanche. “This is another of my impulses. I am dying for some poetry. I don’t know whose poetry. And I don’t know why.”
Arnold went straight to the nearest book-shelf, and took down the first volume that his hand lighted on--a solid quarto, bound in sober brown.
“Well?” asked Blanche. “What have you found?”
Arnold opened the volume, and conscientiously read the title exactly as it stood:
“I have never read Milton,” said Blanche. “Have you?”
“Another instance of sympathy between us. No educated person ought to be ignorant of Milton. Let us be educated persons. Please begin.”
“Of course! Stop! You musn’t sit all that way off--you must sit where I can look at you. My attention wanders if I don’t look at people while they read.”
Arnold took a stool at Blanche’s feet, and opened the “First Book” of Paradise Lost. His “system” as a reader of blank verse was simplicity itself. In poetry we are some of us (as many living poets can testify) all for sound; and some of us (as few living poets can testify) all for sense. Arnold was for sound. He ended every line inexorably with a full stop; and he got on to his full stop as fast as the inevitable impediment of the words would let him. He began:
“Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit. Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste. Brought death into the world and all our woe. With loss of Eden till one greater Man. Restore us and regain the blissful seat. Sing heavenly Muse--”