She spared him. "I was not serious," she laughed. "You must pardon me." It was no new matter with her to relieve the embarrassed. Then she led him once more to the topic.
"You like Weimar, Mr. Pease?"
"Oh, I only like Goethe, you know, and Schiller. I've never been from America."
"And yet you read German?"
"Not very well. You see, I——"
And then he spoke of himself. Miss Cynthia sat amazed. Here was Peveril, who was always silent regarding his hobby, speaking from his heart. Beth coaxed a little; he hung back a bit, but he yielded. It was as if a miser were giving up his gold, yet the gold came. For all that she had invited Beth there, wishing to stir her cousin from his rut, Miss Cynthia presently became enraged. Peveril was telling more than he had ever told her. This chit of a girl, what charm had she?
But Pease himself, as he told the unaccustomed tale in halting sentences, felt comfort. It had been a long time repressed within him; he had seldom touched on it with Cynthia, and though he had not known it, the loneliness of it had been wearing on him all these years. It was sympathy that now brought it out, that quality in Beth which could pierce the armour of such a cynic as Miss Cynthia, or warm so cold a heart as William Fenno's. Pease yielded to it as frost to the sun. So he told of himself and his studies, and the impulse of all these years he confessed at the last.
"You see," he said, flushing painfully, "it's poetry that I love."
And he sat, the man of business, with his fair skin pink as a girl's. Then, lest she should mistake, he explained.
"You mustn't think," he said eagerly, "that I really suppose I understand. I know I lose much—I—I'm not very deep, you know. There are so many subtle things and such beautiful ones that pass me by. Only, you see [more hesitation], I got such pleasure from the English poets that I—tried the German. With a dictionary, you know, and a grammar. And all this is so much to me that I—I don't care for anything else. Can you understand?"