For one moment Shirley looked not quite certain whether she would obey the request or disregard it. A flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the professor's face. Perhaps if he had been looking at her harshly or timidly, or if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then; but he was only awaiting her compliance—as calm as marble, and as cool. She threw the veil of tresses behind her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society? Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor.
She began to read. The language had become strange to her tongue; it faltered; the lecture flowed unevenly, impeded by hurried breath, broken by Anglicized tones. She stopped.
"I can't do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. Moore."
What he read she repeated. She caught his accent in three minutes.
"Très bien," was the approving comment at the close of the piece.
"C'est presque le Français rattrapé, n'est-ce pas?"
"You could not write French as you once could, I dare say?"
"Oh no! I should make strange work of my concords now."
"You could not compose the devoir of 'La Première Femme Savante'?"
"Do you still remember that rubbish?"