There was a ring on the little finger of the hand that drew from an inner pocket a limp leather pocket-book; pale old gold curving up to a small pimple of jewels. The ringed hand moving above the dip of the double watch-chain gave to his youth a strange look of mellow wealthy middle age.
“Ah. I must write in English. Please tell me. But shall we not go at once, this evanink?”
“We can’t; the reading-room closes at eight.”
“That is very English; well; tell me what I shall write.”
Miriam watched as he wrote with a small quick smoothly moving pencil. The pale gold of the ring was finely chased. The small cluster of tiny soft-toned pearls encircling and curving up to a small point of diamond were set in a circlet of enamel, a marvellous rich deep blue. She had her Emerson ready when the writing was done.
“What is Emerson?” he enquired, sitting back to restore his book to its pocket. “I do not know this writer.” His reared head had again the look of heady singing, young, confronting everything, and with all the stored knowledge that can be given to wealthy youth prepared to meet her precious book. If he did not like it there was something shallow in all the wonderful continental knowledge; if he found anything in it; if he understood it at all, they could meet on that one little plot of equal ground; he might even understand her carelessness about all other books.
“He is an American,” she said, desperately handing him the little green volume.
“A most nice little volume,” he demurred, “but I find it strandge that you offer me the book of an American.”
“It is the most perfect English you could have. He is a New Englander, a Bostonian; the Pilgrim Fathers; they kept up the English of our best period. The fifteenth century.”
“That is most interesting,” he said gravely, turning the precious pages. “Why have I not heard of this man? In Russia we know of course their Thoreau, he has a certain popularity amongst extremists, and I know also of course their great poet, Vitmann. I see that this is a kind of philosophical disquisitions.”