Musing there, half turned on her chair, she saw Desboro rise, still looking intently into the fire, and stand so, his well-made, graceful figure, in silhouette, edged with the crimson glow.
"What do you see in it, Mr. Desboro?"
He turned instantly and came over to her:
"A bath of flames would be very popular," he said, "if burning didn't hurt. I was just thinking about it how to invent "
She quoted: "'But I was thinking of a plan to dye one's whiskers green.'"
He said: "I suppose you think me as futile as that old man 'a-settin' on a gate.'"
"Your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his."
"Why should I pursue things? I don't want 'em."
"You are hopeless. There is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. I will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it."
"It's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. Then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry.
"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the way he talked, Mr. Desboro!"
He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:
"Did you adore him?"
"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."
"What woke you up?"
She blushed.
"I thought so," observed Desboro.
"Thought what?"
"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."
"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man perfectly horrid in his ideas and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles "
Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.
"What did he want of you?" he asked.
"I didn't fully understand at the time " she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"