“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it—I can give it to you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'”
“I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works—and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what's beautiful and delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful for.”
Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.”
“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we're like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead.”
“He isn't, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets into the clock whenever I'm with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to go.
“You're always very prompt about leaving me.”
“I—I try to be,” he said. “It isn't easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look tired—”
“Have you ever?”
“Not yet. You always look—you always look—”