When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said:  “There’s something I want to read over.  This:” 

You would think I threw a window open on the dawn....  She has a soul that can be seen around her—­that takes you in its arms like an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for everything....  I shall never understand it all.  I do not know how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak of it....

He stopped and looked at her.

“You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.

“Oh yes,” he returned.  “But it’s true—­especially my knees!”

“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly.  “You might read another line over.  The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror.  Do it again.  But you needn’t read it—­I can give it to you:  ’A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!’”

“I!  I’m one of the hands at the Pump Works—­and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “You love and want what’s beautiful and delicate and serene; it’s really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted.  You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that’s what you were wistful for.”

Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him.  “Why, no,” he said; “I wanted something else more than that.  I wanted you.”

“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding.  “I think we’re like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth.  I’m just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead.”

“He isn’t, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count.  “He gets into the clock whenever I’m with you.”  And, sighing deeply he rose to go.

“You’re always very prompt about leaving me.”

“I—­I try to be,” he said.  “It isn’t easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time.  If I ever saw you look tired—­”

“Have you ever?”

“Not yet.  You always look—­you always look—­”

“How?”

“Care-free.  That’s it.  Except when you feel sorry for me about something, you always have that splendid look.  It puts courage into people to see it.  If I had a struggle to face I’d keep remembering that look—­and I’d never give up!  It’s a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don’t quite understand why it should be, either.”  He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her.  “Mary, you haven’t a ‘secret sorrow,’ have you?”

For answer she only laughed.