Again she met those dark-grey eyes, and their intense honesty, their abundant kindliness, impressed her. Also their self-forgetfulness. They seemed to be too fully occupied with others' interests to have time for their own.
"I think I'll begin, the next place we go to." She heard a little murmur of approval, followed by—"It would save misunderstandings, if each nation would respect the rules of good manners in other nations."
"But don't you think foreigners quite as often offend against our rules, as we against theirs?"
"Yes; and perhaps as unconsciously. No reason why we should not be pioneers in trying not to cause needless annoyance."
"There was a Polish lady here, when we first came; and she told me her little boy said he hoped to be an Englishman when he grew up, 'because the English were always so polite.' I thought that rather nice."
"It looks as if our characters as travellers were improving. We might perhaps take more trouble than we do to be understood. The average Englishman is a little too apt to stand calmly aloof, and to say: 'Only a foreigner! What the dickens does it matter?'"
"I suppose you have been a great deal abroad."
"I was at school on the Continent for some years."
Their eyes met afresh. Something in his was certainly familiar; or in the face as a whole. She had a curious feeling that he and she were not strangers. Yet she could attach no name to the memory-association, vaguely aroused. She was unconscious of her puzzled scrutiny, till he said—
"No. I don't think we are old acquaintances."