in the animals."

"You might have known that when you came."

"I did know it!"

"And in winter do you work at night?"

"I read a good deal, but I don't often write."
She listened as if these details had a rare interest,
and suddenly a temptation quite at variance with the prudence
I had been teaching myself associated itself with her plain,
mild face. Ah yes, she was safe and I could make her safer!
It seemed to me from one moment to another that I could
not wait longer--that I really must take a sounding.
So I went on: "In general before I go to sleep--very often in bed
(it's a bad habit, but I confess to it), I read some great poet.
In nine cases out of ten it's a volume of Jeffrey Aspern."

I watched her well as I pronounced that name but I saw nothing wonderful.
Why should I indeed--was not Jeffrey Aspern the property of the human race?

"Oh, we read him--we HAVE read him," she quietly replied.

"He is my poet of poets--I know him almost by heart."

For an instant Miss Tita hesitated; then her sociability was
too much for her.

"Oh, by heart--that's nothing!" she murmured, smiling. "My aunt used