"Ask my cousin," he advised with merriment.
Whatever Gerty's reason for not caring to bring them together may have been, she concealed it now beneath a ready acceptance of the situation.
"Oh, he tried to make me promise to take him to see you," she explained, "but I've told him you'd show him no quarter because he hasn't read your poems."
Laura raised her eyes to his face, and he had again the sensation of looking into an unutterable personality.
"I'm glad you haven't read them," she rejoined, "for now you won't be able to talk to me about them."
"So you don't like to have one talk about them?"
She met his question with direct simplicity. "About my verse? I shouldn't like to have you do it."
"And why not I?" he demanded, laughing.
"Oh, I don't know," she returned, her eyes lighting with the humour of her frankness, "can one explain? But I'm perfectly sure that it's not the kind of thing you'd like. There's no action in it."
"So Gerty has told you that I'm a strenuous creature?"