She took her hand away and said briskly,--
'I think it's time for us to go if we are to walk along the Embankment and do the Abbey.'
'Mind,' she said, as she took his arm and they turned out of Peter's Row, 'I am not going to be dull and stupid and proper to-day, like you.'
'Why not to-day?' he asked, with a weary smile. This struggle was trying.
'It is only when I wear my prettiest things I can afford to be proper. You can't expect me to be a guy and a frump at the same time. It's not reasonable of you to expect that of me.'
'I assure you I do not expect it of you.'
'A little mercy,' he said, looking gravely, sadly at her.
'Well, let us have a truce. It won't last long, I know. Tell me, which do you prefer me, as a guy or a frump?'
'I think I prefer the grey sober style of yesterday.'
'Do you intend taking me out to see any tombs or vaults, or crypts or catacombs, or anything lively tomorrow?'
'You will make me very happy if you will let me.'
'Very good. I want to try another experiment.'
'With a view to getting your opinion. You are the only poet I ever met, and I am curious to know what poets think.'
'You have already got more than my opinion; you have got all my--'
'What!' she exclaimed, interrupting him. 'On the Thames Embankment, before luncheon, and with the thermometer at ten degrees of frost! I never heard of such a thing. As you are a poet I'll forgive you this time. But the next time you want to say anything pretty or sentimental to me, be more careful. You are a poet, and ought to know you should not make love except when the birds are singing and the flowers blowing. The only thing that's blowing here is the east wind and the penny steamer. For shame, sir!'
'But when the flowers have come, you will have gone away?'
'Is not coming in here,' he whispered to her, when they had been a few minutes in the Abbey, 'like listening to a prayer for man that must be heard.'
'Yes,' she whispered back; 'it may be heard, but it can't be seen. Why don't they clean the windows?'
'It is, you know, the spirit of the Gothic to be gloomy. You, of course, also know the gloom is increased by the legends on the glass,' he whispered.
He had never whispered to her, nor she to him, before. What new delight lurked in these whispers? It was that she or he was for the first time deliberately limiting to one what the other had to say. He was speaking to her, and to her only; she to him, and to him only, as though they had gone out of the general bustle of a ballroom into the seclusion of a grotto.