“What, indeed?” she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him.

“One thinks of nothing,” he continued; “the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.”

“That is true! That is true!” she said.

“Has it ever happened to you,” Léon went on, “to come across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?”

“I have experienced it,” she replied.

“That is why,” he said, “I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.”