Maria Dolores' dark eyes were quizzical.
"The dour and detestable Milton?" she exclaimed. "Poor Milton! What has he done to merit such anathema?
"It isn't what he has done, but what he was," said John. "That he was dour nobody will deny, dour and sour and inhuman. Ask those unfortunate, long-suffering daughters of his, if you doubt it. They could tell you stories. But he was worse. He was a scribe and a Pharisee, a pragmatical, self-righteous, canting old scribe and Pharisee. And he was worse still, and still worse yet. He was—what seems to me to-day the worstest thing unhung—he was a Puritan. Like Winthorpe's, his blood was black and icy and vinegarish. Like Winthorpe—But there. I mustn't abuse Winthorpe any more, and I must try to forgive Milton. Milton wrote seven good words, and Winthorpe unwittingly opened a lover's eyes to his condition."
He paused, and smiled down upon her, and his newly opened (and very blue) blue eyes said much. Her eyes were dreaming on the landscape, where it shone in pearl and gold. However, as she gave no sign of finding his conversation wearisome, he took heart, and continued.
"For when he told me how he had put his love away, never again to see her, and how at that moment she would be scrubbing floors (or taking the discipline, perhaps?) in a convent of Ursulines, suddenly, and without any action of the will on my part, there rose before me the vision of a certain woman;—a woman I knew a little, admired immensely, very much liked, but didn't for an instant suppose I was seriously in love with. And involuntarily, with the vision of her before me, I asked myself whether, mutatis mutandis, I could have done as he had, and in a flash I saw that I could not,—that not for the wealth of Ormus and of Ind could I or would I give her up, if once I had her. So, by that token, and by the uncommon wrath with which his tale inflamed me," John, with a rhetorical flourish, perorated, "I discovered that I loved." And again his eyes said much.
Hers were still on the prospect.
"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in a musing voice.
"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so, to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes, her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her carriage,—the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her hands,—they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,—'tis the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,—which after all, alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing."
He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. Qui pane d'amour—how does the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,—she was preparing to rise. He would have given worlds to offer a helping hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in courage. When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will fly out of the window. So she rose unaided.
"Let us hope," she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, "that she will soon come to know you better."