"Certainly. Any thing to please you. Your request is at once too reasonable and too polite to be disregarded. Have you any choice of subject?" "What have you been reading?" "Merely a foolish lovelorn ditty." "Read it to me," she commanded. "As you please; if you will give me the book. Sir John Suckling is responsible for it." "'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" Patty quoted. The lawyer smiled, and in his rich voice read the following poem:-- TRUE SIGNS OF LOVE. Honest lover, whosoever, If in all thy love there ever Wavering thought was, if thy flame Were not still even, still the same, Know this,-- Thou lov'st amiss; And to love true Thou must begin again, and love anew. If, when she appears i' th' room, Thou dost not quake, and be struck dumb, And, in striving this to cover, Dost not speak thy words twice over, Know this,-- Thou lov'st amiss; And to love true Thou must begin again, and love anew. If fondly thou dost not mistake, And all defects for graces take, Persuad'st thyself that jests are broken When she has little or nothing spoken, Know this,-- Thou lov'st amiss; And to love true Thou must begin again, and love anew. If, when thou appear'st to be within, Thou let'st not men ask, and again; And, when thou answer'st, if it be To what was asked thee properly; Know this,-- Thou lov'st amiss; And to love true Thou must begin again, and love anew. If, when thy stomach calls to eat, Thou cut'st not fingers 'stead of meat, And, with much gazing on her face, Dost not rise hungry from the place, Know this,-- Thou lov'st amiss; And to love true Thou must begin again, and love anew. He read better than he intended, or, indeed, than he knew. His voice had always a remarkable power over Patty,--a fascination which she loved to experience. As he read, she turned away from him, and gazed through the twig-set window toward the softly-outlined hills. As he concluded, she turned her face toward him like a flash of light. "Do you believe it?" she asked in a voice which proved her melted mood. But her companion was less facile in his mental changes, and did not respond to this quick transition from banter to sentiment. "I believe," he replied, "that it is wholly and entirely--poetry. It is not a bad description of Burleigh Blood." She sprang up impetuously from the seat into which she had sunk, and began to pace restlessly up and down. "But there is some snap to that sort of love," she said: "one can believe in its earnestness." "And in its unreasoning exaction," he returned. "It must be very uncomfortable." "But I'd rather be hated than comfortably loved: it would amount to more. I hate placidity. I think love should be so strong that one surrenders one's whole being to it."