He smiled at the almost tragic tones of her voice.
“Yes, I have an uneasy feeling that I have made you uncomfortable with my uncanny performance.”
“No,” she said, slowly, “not uncomfortable.”
“It was a stupid thing to do,” he went on. “Stupid and unsuitable to the bulk of the audience; but my excuse—well, my only excuse is that I knew no other piece, and was too—well, too lazy to learn any other. I will never recite it again.”
“No?” she breathed. “Don’t say that. It would be a waste. It was beautiful—beautiful—and yet so sad. I——” She paused. “I have read the poem—everybody has; but I did not know it was so dreadful until to-night.”
“Because I give it with all the usual tricks,” he said, half-contemptuously. “That is why. But it is a great piece of verse—and dreadful.”
“My sympathies are all with Eugene Aram,” she said, dreamily. “It is wrong, I know.”
He looked at her for a moment in silence.
“Yes, it is wrong,” he said. “One should not sympathize with the man who commits a crime; but I understand. His sufferings were almost an expiation.”
She shuddered slightly.