"What's your hurry? Can't you wait?"
He could not wait. He was in a fever of impatience to inhale the whole of the Gentile language—definitions, spelling, pronunciation, and all—with one desperate effort. It was the one great impediment that seemed to stand between him and the enchanted new world that had revealed itself to him.
"Oh, do hear me read—may you live long, Flora! It somehow draws mo as with a kind of impure force. Will you?"
"All right," she yielded, with kindly curiosity at the fervor of his request, and feeling flattered.
He had been reading perhaps a quarter of an hour when he grew absent-minded.
"You must have skipped a line again," she said, in an awkward undertone.
"Oh, yes!"
They were seated at a respectful distance, with the corner of the marble table between them, her full, well-modeled bust erect and stately against the pier-glass. She wore a waist of dark-blue silk, trimmed with red, and there was a red ribbon in her shock of inky hair. Presently she leaned forward to see a mispronounced word for herself. Their heads found themselves close together. Her ivory cheek almost touched his.
"Where is it?" she questioned, under her breath.
He made no reply. His glance was riveted to her raven eyelashes. A dash of scarlet lurking under her chin dazed his brain. After a slight pause he said, as he timidly stroked her burning cheek:—