‘One or two, if you will give me them.’
She chose a fine blackberry, and held it out. Tarrant let it fall into his palm, and murmured, ‘You have a beautiful hand.’ When, a moment after, he glanced at her, she seemed to be reading Helmholtz.
The calm of the golden afternoon could not have been more profound. Birds twittered softly in the wood, and if a leaf rustled, it was only at the touch of wings. Earth breathed its many perfumes upon the slumberous air.
‘You know,’ said Tarrant, after a long pause, and speaking as though he feared to break the hush, ‘that Keats once stayed at Teignmouth.’
Nancy did not know it, but said ‘Yes.’ The name of Keats was familiar to her, but of his life she knew hardly anything, of his poetry very little. Her education had been chiefly concerned with names.
‘Will you read me a paragraph of Helmholtz?’ continued the other, looking at her with a smile. ‘Any paragraph, the one before you.’
She hesitated, but read at length, in an unsteady voice, something about the Conservation of Force. It ended in a nervous laugh.
‘Now I’ll read something to you,’ said Tarrant. And he began to repeat, slowly, musically, lines of verse which his companion had never heard:
‘O what can ail thee, Knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.’
He went through the poem; Nancy the while did not stir. It was as though he murmured melody for his own pleasure, rather than recited to a listener; but no word was inaudible. Nancy knew that his eyes rested upon her; she wished to smile, yet could not. And when he ceased, the silence held her motionless.