He hesitated; Mrs. Jakes had managed to make the word difficult. But Miss Harding took it in her stride.
"For the lungs?" she suggested without compunction. "Yes, I 'm sure it is. And you live here all the time, do you?"
"I was born here," Paul answered.
"How you must love it," she said, and met his eyes with a look in which there was a certain curiosity. "All this, I mean," she explained. Then: "But do you?"
"Yes," he answered. "It 's—it's fine to look at—if you like looking at things."
It was not all that he desired to say, for he was newly eager to make himself clear to this wonderful person at his side, and he felt that he was not doing himself justice. But Miss Harding had seen inarticulate souls before, aching to be confidential and to make revelations and unable to run their trouble into a mould of speech. They were not uncommon in the neighborhood of her address in Kensington. She smiled her recognition of the phenomenon. "There are not many kinds of men, and only two kinds of boy," she said to herself. She was twenty-six, and she knew.
"Oh, I," she answered. "Yes, I like looking at things."
Paul nodded, watching his horses. "I was sure you did when I saw you at the window," he said. He turned to her, and she smiled at him, interested in the strong simplicity with which he spoke.
"I was sure," he repeated, "and yet nobody like you ever came here before, ever. They always went on in the train. I used to wonder if one of them would never get out, but they never did. They just sat still by the window, with their faces tired and sleepy, and went on again."
He loosed the lash of his whip, and it made lightning circles over the off horse, and the tail of the lash slapped that animal reproachfully on the neck. Miss Harding contented herself with a little incoherent noise of general sympathy. "If I say anything," she thought, "I 'll be knocked off my seat with a compliment."