After having endured so
much you are entitled to some relaxation. I should do as I liked now,
if I were you."
She looked at him inquiringly. It seemed as if he were not expressing
himself, but trying the effect of what he said upon her.
He was sitting in his usual place now, drawing figures on the blotting-
pad.
"You have read, I suppose?" he added, after a pause, and without
looking up. "I wish I had never read anything," she exclaimed
passionately. "I wish I could neither read, write, nor think."
But the trouble now was, if only she could have recognised it, that she
did not think; she only felt.
She got up and went to the mantelpiece; he remained where he was,
sitting with his back to her. Presently she began to look at the china,
absently at first, but afterwards with interest. There were some new
specimens, just unpacked, and all crowded together.
"What a lovely lotus-leaf," she said at last. "Satsuma, I suppose--no,
Kioto; but what a good specimen. And it is broken, too. What a pity! I
should so like to mend it."
"Would you?" he said, rousing himself.
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