She took the book and settled herself with her back to the window, a little behind me.
"Come forward, please. It is more comfortable to listen when one can see the reader."
She rose reluctantly, and pulled her chair nearer me and the fire, then she began. She chose those poems the least sensuous, and the more abstract. I watched her all the time. She read "Rutland Gate," and her voice showed how she sympathized with the man. Then she read "Atavism," and her little highly bred face looked savage! I realized with a quiver of delight that she is the most passionate creature,—of course she is, with that father and mother! Wait until I have awakened her enough, and she will break through all the barriers of convention and reserve, and pride.
Ah! That will be a moment!
"Now read 'Listen Beloved.'"
She turned the pages, found it, and began, and when she reached the two verses which had so interested me, she looked up for a second, and her lovely eyes were misty and far away. Then she went on and finished, letting the book drop in her lap.
"That accords with your theory of reincarnation, that souls meet again and again?"
"Yes."
"In one of the books I got upon the subject it said all marriages were karmic debts or rewards. I wonder what our marriage is, don't you? Perhaps we were two enemies who injured each other, and now have to make up by being of use, each to each."
"Probably," she was looking down.