“I don’t,” she answered hastily, anxious to please.
He raised his eyebrows. “Then you should. Have you a favourite poet, Madeline?”
“Oh yes, of course—Swinburne.”
She thought this a perfectly safe thing to say.
“Strong meat for babes,” he of course replied, and then began to murmur to himself: “For a day and a night love sang to us, played with us. You think that beautiful, Madeline?”
“Oh yes. How beautifully you say it!”
He laughed. “Quoting poetry at Rumpelmeyer’s! Well, perhaps no place is quite prosaic where …”
She looked up.
He took another tea-cake.
… “Where there’s anyone so interested, so intelligent as yourself.”