He did not understand, and I quickly learned that he did not know the poem.
"I'm just reading Browning," he confessed, "and it's pretty tough.

I haven't got very far along, and as it is I've about lost my bearings." Not to be tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from his state-room and read "Caliban" aloud.

He was delighted.

It was a primitive mode of reasoning and of looking at things that he understood thoroughly.

He interrupted again and again with comment and criticism.
When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third.