"You know I detest her!" she exclaimed.
"Do you refer to all four of the writers I mentioned as of the feminine gender?" inquired Bryant with an appearance of fervid interest. The fool was actually enjoying it all.
Seeing that her lover was only chaffing, Margaret made a brave effort, settled herself in her chair and found the place in her book.
"Before you begin—I beg your pardon," said Bryant deferentially, "but let me say that I was up late last night, and if I can't keep awake under the spell of your voice, don't blame me. Wake me up at the catastrophe, when the distant door slams or somebody breaks a teacup."
Miss Selwyn laid the volume down again, and, still smiling, answered quietly but a shade frostily:
"It would take something written with a mixture of raw brandy, blood and vermilion paint to arrest your attention, I believe! Your authors write with—with—an ax in place of a pen. But I can't harrow up my own imagination with their horrors, much less read them aloud!"
"An exclusive régime of problem novels, plays and moralizings on pessimistic lines is bad for the mental digestion," admitted Bryant in judicial tones. "Poor girl! I must teach you to live in and love this beautiful, violent, sweet and good old world of ours—the world of real nature, real men and women, and real literature!"
"I thank you for your indulgent, patronizing intentions," she flashed back at him. "You would feed butterflies on brawn, teach the bluebird to scream like a macaw, make the trembling, silver-leaved white birches all over into oaks."
"My dear Margaret—" stammered Bryant, starting up, but he could not lay the spirit he had raised.
"There are questions in life that cannot be settled by the stroke of a sword or ax," she went on. "Your favorite writer has smirched the fair figure of childhood in his brutal pictures of boys' life. He has made an unwholesome, disgusting thing out of what should be and is healthful and fine. How can you, who read him with patience, carp at my taste for what seems to me well thought and well expressed?"