"It's the best I can do—as yet," replied she. "And it's quite an advance on what I was. Yes, I am learning—slowly."
"Save all your salary, then," said Freddie. "When you buy anything charge it, and I'll attend to the bill."
Her expression told him that he had never made a shrewder move in his life. He knew he had made himself secure against losing her; for he knew what a force gratitude was in her character.
Her mind was now free—free for the educational business in hand. She appreciated that he had less to learn than she. Civilization, the science and art of living, of extracting all possible good from the few swift years of life, has been—since the downfall of woman from hardship, ten or fifteen thousand years ago—the creation of the man almost entirely. Until recently among the higher races such small development of the intelligence of woman as her seclusion and servitude permitted was sporadic and exotic. Nothing intelligent was expected of her—and it is only under the compulsion of peremptory demand that any human being ever is roused from the natural sluggishness. But civilization, created by man, was created for woman. Woman has to learn how to be the civilized being which man has ordained that she shall be—how to use for man's comfort and pleasure the ingenuities and the graces he has invented.
It is easy for a man to pick up the habits, tastes, manners and dress of male citizens of the world, if he has as keen eyes and as discriminating taste as had Palmer, clever descendant of the supple Italian. But to become a female citizen of the world is not so easy. For Susan to learn to be an example of the highest civilization, from her inmost thoughts to the outermost penumbra of her surroundings—that would be for her a labor of love, but still a labor. As her vanity was of the kind that centers on the advantages she actually had, instead of being the more familiar kind that centers upon non-existent charms of mind and person, her task was possible of accomplishment—for those who are sincerely willing to learn, who sincerely know wherein they lack, can learn, can be taught. As she had given these matters of civilization intelligent thought she knew where to begin—at the humble, material foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on. They aspire to the clouds and the stars at once—and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage. They flap their gaudy artificial wings; there is motion, but no ascent. Susan wished to build—and build solidly. She began with the so-called trifles.
When they had been at Naples a week Palmer said:
"Don't you think we'd better push on to Paris?"
"I can't go before Saturday," replied she. "I've got several fittings yet."
"It's pretty dull here for me—with you spending so much time in the shops. I suppose the women's shops are good"—hesitatingly—"but I've heard those in Paris are better."
"The shops here are rotten. Italian women have no taste in dress. And the Paris shops are the best in the world."