CHAPTER IX
The Deductions of Old John Zed
That was how, in a few short moments, he found himself walking away beside this lithe, bright-eyed, altogether luscious ginch in the tennis frock — walking rather hurriedly, because he was afraid he would hear his father's stern hail from the porch, bidding him back to duty and the lighthouse. If possible, that last remark of hers drew her closer to him than ever, a powerful, unspoken, dazzling sympathy. "He must be dying for a dri—" She knew. This must be the sort of thing Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote about in the sonnets. It was not only sympathetic feminine intuition on her part, but he realized that the very sight of this girl had made him want to reach for a cocktail; some women have that effect. Such a glamour must have attended all the great sirens of the ages. In its absence there are unfulfilled romances. If, when Dante met Beatrice that famous time on the what's-its-name bridge, Beatrice had smiled at him and whispered, "Look here, I could do with a slug of Chianti," then the poor sap would have tried to find out her address and telephone number, instead of merely going home and grousing about it in an epic.
Here in the twilight coppice the strength and reasonableness of this theory grew on him; and, as he looked down at the hazel eyes which were regarding him inquiringly over her shoulder, he was struck with inspiration.
He burst out suddenly:
There once was a poet named Dante,
Who was fond of imbibing Chianti—
He wrote about hell
And a Florentine gel,
Which distressed his Victorian auntie."