And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a second meeting with him. 🔊 This was on an evening in January. 🔊 Going into the aforesaid domino-room, I had passed a table at which sat a pale man with an open book before him. 🔊 He had looked from his book to me, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I ought to have recognized him. 🔊 I returned to pay my respects. 🔊 After exchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see I am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, 🔊 but, "I prefer," Soames replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed his gesture that I should sit down. 🔊

I asked him if he often read here. 🔊

"Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating the title of his book—"The Poems of Shelley." 🔊

"Anything that you really"—and I was going to say "admire?" 🔊 But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so, for he said with unwonted emphasis, "Anything second-rate." 🔊

I had read little of Shelley, but, "Of course," I murmured, "he's very uneven." 🔊

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. 🔊 That's why I read him here. 🔊 The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. 🔊 He's tolerable here." 🔊 Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. 🔊 He laughed. 🔊 Soames's laugh was a short, single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. 🔊 "What a period!" he uttered, laying the book down. 🔊 And, "What a country!" he added. 🔊