"Don't you? oh!" said Katharine, looking disappointed. "Then there's nothing I can do for you?"
"Oh, yes. You can talk, if you will," said Paul, smiling. "Come and sit on the chair at the end of the bed, where you sat the first day you came in. I can see you, then."
"It is ever so much nicer to see the person you are talking to, isn't it?" observed Katharine, as she obeyed his suggestion.
"Much nicer," assented Paul, though it had never occurred to him to suggest that Miss Esther should occupy that particular chair. "Now then, talk, please!"
Katharine made a sign of dismay.
"I can't," she said. "You begin."
"Who is your favourite poet?" asked Paul solemnly. She disconcerted him by taking his question seriously, and he had to listen to her enthusiastic eulogies of several favourite poets, before he had an opportunity of explaining himself.
She detected him in the act of suppressing a yawn, and she stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.
"I believe I am boring you dreadfully. Shall I go?" she asked. The colour had come into her cheeks, and her voice had a note of distress in it.
"I want you to tell me something, first," was his unexpected reply. "Do you talk about poetry to young Morton?"