But our passionate generosity of soul was running in
too strong a tide just then to be stemmed by any such interference; it
could but be diverted, and Muncaster's bedroom served us as well wherein
to squat in one of those close, rapt circles of talk such as, I think,
after all, men who love poetry can alone know--men, anyhow, with _a_
poetry.
Bed, that had for some time been calling us, unheeded as Juliet's nurse,
had at last to be obeyed; but how grudgingly; and how eagerly we sprang
from it at no late hour in the morning, at the first thought of the
sweet new thing that had come into the world--like children who, half
in a doze before waking, suddenly remember last night's new wonder of a
toy, to awake in an instant, and scramble into clothes to look at it
again. Thus, like children we rose; but it was shy as lovers we met at
the breakfast-table, as lovers shy after last night's kissing. (You may
not have loved a fellow-man in this way, Reader, but we are, any one of
us, as good men as you; so keep your eyebrows down, I beseech you.)
One most winsome trait of our new friend was soon apparent--as, having,
to our sorrow, to part at the inn door right and left, we talked of
meeting again at one or the other's home: a delicate disinclination to
irreverently 'make sure' of the new joy; a 'listening fear,' as though
of a presiding good spirit that might revoke his gift if one stretched
out towards it with too greedy hands.
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