“Any body’s,” said Blanche. “This is another of my impulses. I am dying for some poetry. I don’t know whose poetry. And I don’t know why.”
Arnold went straight to the nearest book-shelf, and took down the first volume that his hand lighted on—a solid quarto, bound in sober brown.
“Well?” asked Blanche. “What have you found?”
Arnold opened the volume, and conscientiously read the title exactly as it stood:
“Paradise Lost. A Poem. By John Milton.”
“I have never read Milton,” said Blanche. “Have you?”
“No.”
“Another instance of sympathy between us. No educated person ought to be ignorant of Milton. Let us be educated persons. Please begin.”
“At the beginning?”
“Of course! Stop! You musn’t sit all that way off—you must sit where I can look at you. My attention wanders if I don’t look at people while they read.”