'Oh, heavens!' cried Paul. 'This is how one's past finds one out.'
'Oh, some of them aren't bad,' she said. 'Wait, I'll read you one.'
'Then you know English?'
'A leetle. Bot the one I shall read is in Franch.'
And then she read out, in an enchanting voice, one of his own French sonnets. 'That isn't bad,' she added. 'Do you think it hopelessly bad?'
'It shows promise, perhaps—when you read it.'
'It is strange, though, that it should have been written by a man who had never been in love.'
'Imagination! Upon my word, I never had been. Besides, the idea is stolen. It's almost a literal translation from Rossetti. What with a little imagination and a little ingenuity, one can do wonderfully well on other people's experience.'
'I don't believe you. You have been in love a hundred times.'
'Never.'