He watched her face eagerly as her eyes wandered over the sheet. She seemed to be reading every line over and over in order to grasp their meaning.
He had hoped she would make some allusion to the subject described. He had also hoped she might ask him for permission to keep the poem, but not a word. Her eyes only contracted a bit, a faint deepening of color on her cheeks, and she had suddenly again grown distant. He felt as if she had unexpectedly stretched out her arm and forbade him to come near her. He was conscious of the awkwardness of her silence. Her lips were closed tightly as she would not open them for fear a word might drop.
“You think poetry mere drivel, don’t you?” he said as he awkwardly replaced the poem into his pocket.
Her eyelashes rose, a silent look, but without a responsive syllable.
“At least you think my poetry is drivel,” he soon added.
There was the faintest smile playing around her lips. Her silence and smile seemed to him a challenge. His dormant pride, his sublime confidence in his powers, suddenly made him boastful. There was fire in his eyes.
“You just wait and I’ll show you all that my poems are no drivel. I’ll make my songs ring throughout the land. Every man, woman, and child shall read them. You may all laugh at me now—and Rudolph may jest about me—but I’ll make them all listen to me some day—”
He looked at her face but could read nothing in it. The next moment he became conscious of his boasting and felt ashamed of his utterances.
“Oh, I am a fool,” he burst out as if talking to himself. “You think me a braggart, don’t you?” He touched her hand and looked beseechingly at her.
She looked at him intently for a bare second.