Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/121

Rh thrilled one to the finger tips, how could one feed one's vitality, one's over-mastering joy of life, with printer's ink and the greyest paper in London?

He glanced at her again. She was looking out of the window at the sordid little Bermondsey houses, where the red buds of the Virginia creeper were already waking to their green summer life-work. He spoke. And no one would have guessed from his speech that he was a poet.

"What a beautiful day!" he said.

"Yes, very," said she, and her tone gave no indication of any exuberant spring expansiveness to match his own.

He looked at her again. No. Yes. Yes, he would try the experiment he had long wanted to try—had often in long, silent, tête-à-tête journeys dreamed of trying. He would skip all the pitiful formalities of chance acquaintanceship. He would speak as one human being to another—would assume the sure bond of a common kinship. He said— "It is such a beautiful day that I want to talk about it! Mayn't I talk to you? Don't