“Some of yours?”
She coloured deeply. “Hush, papa, I thought you had forgotten—you said it was 'nonsense,' you know.”
“Very likely it was. But I mean to give it another reading some day. Never mind—nobody heard.”
So she writes poetry. I always knew she was very clever, besides being well-educated. Talented women—modern Corinnes—my impression of them was rather repulsive. But she—that soft, shy girl, with her gay simplicity, her meek, household ways—
I said, if Miss Theodora were going to read, perhaps she might remember she had once promised to improve my mind with a course of German literature. There was a book about a gentleman of my own name—Max—Max something or other—
“Piccolomini. You have not forgotten him! What a memory you have for little things.” She thought so! I said, if she considered a poor doctor, accustomed to deal more with bodies than souls, could comprehend the sort of books she seemed so fond of, I would like to hear about Max Piccolomini.
“Certainly. Only—”
“You think I could not understand it.”
“I never thought any such thing,” she cried out in her old abrupt way, and went out of the room immediately.
The book she fetched was a little dainty one. Perhaps it had been a gift. I asked to look at it.