"
"There!" said Letty, almost crossly, handing him her book, and
pointing to the sonnet, as she rose to go.
Tom took the book, and sprang to his feet. He had never read the
poem, for Milton had not been one of his masters. He stood
devouring it. He was doing his best to lay hold of it quickly,
for there Letty stood, with her hand held out to take the book
again, ready upon its restoration to go at once. Silent and
motionless, to all appearance unhasting, he read and reread.
Letty was restless, and growing quite impatient; but still Tom
read, a smile slow-spreading from his eyes over his face; he was
taking possession of the poem, he would have said. But the shades
and kinds and degrees of possession are innumerable; and not
until we downright love a thing, can we _know_ we understand
it, or rightly call it our own; Tom only admired this one; it was
all he was capable of in regard to such at present. Had the whim
for acquainting himself with it seized him in his own study, he
would have satisfied it with a far more superficial interview;
but the presence of the girl, with those eyes fixed on him as he
read--his mind's eye saw them--was for the moment an enlargement
of his being, whose phase to himself was a consciousness of
ignorance.
"It is a beautiful poem," he said at last, quite honestly; and,
raising his eyes, he looked straight in hers.
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