his toneless voice, `to be interrupted,' and I obeyed his gesture
that I should sit down.

I asked him if he often read here. `Yes; things of this kind I
read here,' he answered, indicating the title of his book--`The
Poems of Shelley.'

`Anything that you really'--and I was going to say `admire?'
But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I
had done so, for he said, with unwonted emphasis, `Anything
second-rate.'

I had read little of Shelley, but `Of course,' I murmured, `he's
very uneven.'

`I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with
him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The
noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here.'
Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He
laughed. Soames' laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound
from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or
brightening of the eyes. `What a period!' he uttered, laying the
book down. And `What a country!' he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or
less held his own against the drawbacks of time and place. He
admitted that there were `passages in Keats,' but did not specify
them. Of `the older men,' as he called them, he seemed to like
only Milton. `Milton,' he said, `wasn't sentimental.' Also,
`Milton had a dark insight.' And again, `I can always read