“Twenty minutes to eight,” he answered, looking at his watch. And his voice drew me towards him even more than had his beautiful strong face. I thanked him, and we fell back into silence.
“Where do you live?” he turned and suddenly asked me.
“Oh, only over there,” I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the chimney-fringed horizon behind us. “I needn't be in till half-past eight. I like this Park so much,” I added, “I often come and sit here of an evening.”
“Why do you like to come and sit here?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“Oh, I don't know,” I answered. “I think.”
I marvelled at myself. With strangers generally I was shy and silent; but the magic of his bright eyes seemed to have loosened my tongue.
I told him my name; that we lived in a street always full of ugly sounds, so that a gentleman could not think, not even in the evening time, when Thought goes a-visiting.
“Mamma does not like the twilight time,” I confided to him. “It always makes her cry. But then mamma is—not very young, you know, and has had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I suppose.”
He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now. “God made women weak to teach us men to be tender,” he said. “But you, Paul, like this 'twilight time'?”
“Yes,” I answered, “very much. Don't you?”