But she did not answer his question.
“I dare say I might dislike living alone. I’ve never done such a thing, therefore I can’t tell.”
“You’re an enigma,” he exclaimed. “And you seem so—so—you have this extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you. You are friends with everybody.”
“Indeed I’m not.”
“I mean you’re so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don’t you care for anybody?”
“I care very much for some people.”
“And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book”—at that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest five hundred and seventy-four years ago—“you’re perfectly happy.”
“The ‘Paradiso’ isn’t an ordinary book,” she said, very gently, and looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her yellow-brown eyes.
“I don’t believe you ever read an ordinary book.”
“I like to feed on fine things. I’m half afraid of the second-rate.”