Leonore looked surprised. "He's getting very clever," she thought, never
dreaming that Peter's cleverness, like so many other people's nowadays,
consisted in a pertinent use of quotations. Parrot cleverness, we might
term it. Leonore listened to the air which the musicians were beginning,
and finding it the Lancers, or dreariest of dances, she made Peter happy
by assenting.
"Suppose we go out on the veranda," said Peter, still quoting.
"Now of what are you going to talk?" said Leonore, when they were
ensconced on a big wicker divan, in the soft half light of the Chinese
lanterns.
"I want to tell you of something that seems to me about a hundred years
ago," said Peter. "But it concerns myself, and I don't want to bore
you."
"Try, and if I don't like it I'll stop you," said Leonore, opening up a
line of retreat worthy of a German army.
"I don't know what you'll think about it," said Peter, faltering a
little. "I suppose I can hardly make you understand it, as it is to me.
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