'Tiger! tiger! burning bright—
In the forests of the night!'”
“Say some more. You couldn't remember it, though, could you? Can you remember it now?”
He leaned over to her the merest trifle:—
“'What immortal hand and eye
Framed thy wondrous symmetry?'”
he quoted (slightly altering the text for his own purposes) with a look so direct and an intonation so profound that Paula, with all her armored experience, felt herself growing pink.
“Then you brought me wonderful things to play with and a kite to fly and gum to chew,” she said.
“And you put it in your hair.”
“So I did. And they found it. But I didn't tell. I said an angel brought it to me. You remember? You were Angel.”
“And you were Tiger.”
Now, I realize that diplomats of ambassadorial degree do not snort. But the eminent gentleman on Miss Varick's left delivered his emotions of what, in a lesser mortal, would have been dangerously near a snort, and thenceforward devoted his attention to his hostess exclusively, thereby seriously hampering her in her efforts to follow the progress of the reunion of old playmates.