"Now read, will you please."
I lay back in my chair and shaded my eye with my hand.
"Do you want any special poem?"
"Read several, and then get to 'Listen Beloved,' there is a point in it
I want to discuss with you."
She took the book and settled herself with her back to the window, a
little behind me.
"Come forward, please. It is more comfortable to listen when one can see
the reader."
She rose reluctantly, and pulled her chair nearer me and the fire, then
she began. She chose those poems the least sensuous, and the more
abstract. I watched her all the time. She read "Rutland Gate," and her
voice showed how she sympathized with the man. Then she read "Atavism,"
and her little highly bred face looked savage! I realized with a quiver
of delight that she is the most passionate creature,--of course she is,
with that father and mother! Wait until I have awakened her enough, and
she will break through all the barriers of convention and reserve, and
pride.
Ah! That will be a moment!
"Now read 'Listen Beloved.'"
She turned the pages, found it, and began, and when she reached the two
verses which had so interested me, she looked up for a second, and her
lovely eyes were misty and far away. Then she went on and finished,
letting the book drop in her lap.
"That accords with your theory of reincarnation, that souls meet again
and again?"
"Yes."
"In one of the books I got upon the subject it said all marriages were
karmic debts or rewards. I wonder what our marriage is, don't you?
Perhaps we were two enemies who injured each other, and now have to
make up by being of use, each to each."
"Probably," she was looking down.
"Do you ever have that strange feeling that you are searching for
something all the time, something of the soul, that you are
unsatisfied?"
"Yes, often."
"Read those last verses again."
Her voice is the most beautiful I have ever heard, modulated,
expressive, filled with vibrant vitality and feeling, but this is the
first time she has read anything appertaining to love. I could hear that
she was restraining all emphasis, and trying to give the sensuous
passionate words a commonplace cold interpretation. Never before has she
read so monotonously. I knew, ("sensed" is the modern word), that this
was because she probably felt and understood every line and did not want
to let me see it. Suddenly I found myself becoming suffused with
emotion.