"Yes. And after Shakspeare, I like him best, and then Longfellow. Why do you speak in that tone? Don't you like him?"
"I think I like no poet half so well. You mistake me," replies he, ashamed of his own surprise at her preference for his lordship beneath the calm purity of her eyes. "But—only—it seemed to me Longfellow would be more suited to you."
"Well, so I do love him. And just then it was of him I was thinking: when I looked up to the sky his words came back to me. You remember what he says about the moon rising 'over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows,' and how,—
'Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels,
That is so sweet, I think."
"I remember it; and I remember, too, who watched all that: do you?" he asks, his eyes fixed upon hers.
"Yes; Gabriel—poor Gabriel and Evangeline," returns she, too wrapped up in recollections of that sad and touching tale to take to heart his meaning:—
'Meanwhile, apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure
Sat the lovers, and whispered together.'
That is the part you mean, is it not? I know all that poem very nearly by heart."
He is a little disappointed by the calmness of her answer.