"Appeal! and to whom ?" she enquired.
"To you--to your mercy," he laughed.
She glanced at Gerty with a look which hardly simulated a curiosity she apparently did not feel.
"But why should you need my mercy ?" she demanded, as she sat down on a little sofa heaped with cushions.
His gaze, after resting a moment on the smooth black hair beneath her velvet hat, turned to the exquisite shining waves which encircled Gerty's head.
"Ask my cousin," he advised with merriment.
Whatever Gerty's reason for not caring to bring them together may have been, she concealed it now beneath a ready acceptance of the situation.
"Oh, he tried to make me promise to take him to see you," she explained, "but I've told him you'd show him no quarter because he hasn't read your poems." Laura raised her eyes to his face, and he had again the sensation of looking into an unutterable personality.
"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.