"I'm glad you haven't read them," she rejoined, "for now you won't be
able to talk to me about them."

"So you don't like to have one talk about them?"

She met his question with direct simplicity. "About my verse? I
shouldn't like to have you do it."

"And why not I?" he demanded, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know," she returned, her eyes lighting with the humour of
her frankness, "can one explain? But I'm perfectly sure that it's not
the kind of thing you'd like. There's no action in it."

"So Gerty has told you that I'm a strenuous creature?"

"Perhaps. I don't remember." She turned to Gerty, looking down upon her
with a tenderness that suffused her face with colour. "What was it that
you told me, dearest?"

"What did I tell you?" repeated Gerty, still clasping Laura's hand. "Oh,
it must have been that he agrees with some dreadful person who said that
poetry was the insanity of prose."

Laura laughed as she glanced back at him, and he contrasted her deep
contralto notes with Gerty's flute-like soprano.

"Well, he may not be right, but he is with the majority," she said.