"I was fearful that you had been hurt last night, Mr. Bainrothe," I hazarded, "from the expression of your face as I caught it at the box-door. I am glad to see you well this evening."
"I was hurt," he said, "to be frank with you. The scoundrel gave me a severe blow on the chest, which brought a little blood to my lips, and for the time I suffered. Had it not been for the faintness under which I was laboring I could not have failed to identify you. But you are generous enough to forgive this oversight I am convinced."
"Oh, surely! it was most natural under the circumstances. I have a habit of fixing faces at a glance that is rather uncommon, I believe. I never forget any one I have seen even for a moment, or where I have seen them, or even a name I have heard."
"A royal gift truly, one of the secrets of popularity, I believe. It is not so with me usually, though when my eye once drinks in a face" (and he looked steadily at mine while he spoke those words slowly, as if wrapped in contemplation), "it never departs again. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,' you know, Miss Monfort." He sighed slightly.
"Yes, that line has passed into an axiom, the only sensible one, I believe, by-the-by, that Keats ever wrote," I laughed.
"Oh, you do Keats injustice. Have you studied him, Miss Monfort?"
"Studied poetry? What an idea! No, but I have tried to read him, and failed. I think he had a very crude, chaotic mind indeed; I like more clearness."
"Clearness and shallowness most often go together," he observed. "When you see the pebbles at the bottom of a stream, most likely its waters are not deep."
"Yet, you can stir up mud with a long pole in the pool more readily than in the river. Keats wanted a current, it seems to me, to give him vitality and carry off his own mental impurities. His was a stagnant being."
"What a queer comparison," and he shook his head laughingly, "ingenious, but at fault; you are begging the question now. Well, what do you say to Shelley?"