“Ah!” Maurice beamed his delight at her perception. “You have seen the best thing in Geoffrey—the single-minded directness of his quest—its object is no Holy Grail; but his resolute advance has its beauty.”
“And he is very fond of you, I see that too. It’s a touch of human tenderness that makes him less chilling.”
“Yes, dear old Geoff; I think that I appeal to his one aesthetic fibre. I think he feels towards me as though I were a bit of very nice Limoges hanging on his wall. The colour pleases his eye. He would be sorry if I got broken.”
“No, no; you touch a deeper fibre than the aesthetic. I don’t believe he has any aesthetic fibres at all, or sees the colour in anything. How grey and rigid his life must be.” Geoffrey walked in as she said it.
Maurice greeted his friend gaily. “Just in time, Geoffrey, to hear a bit of poetry. I’m going to try its effect on you and Miss Merrick at once.” He turned his pages.
Geoffrey, laying down the morning paper he held in his hand, came to Felicia’s side.
“You are fond of poetry, Miss Merrick?”
Felicia had already observed his manner of humorous tolerance towards women. He smiled and made a remark as though offering a child a lollipop—and without consulting the child’s preference as to size, shape or colour.
“Sometimes,” she answered, looking down at him from her high seat on the steps. Their eyes had not met since that look of the day before. “Not too often.”
“I thought it could not be too often for the modern cultured young woman. Surely you can’t get too much of—Browning for instance?” and Geoffrey smiled up at her. She felt that a very large bull’s-eye was being kindly offered.