They sat silent for a moment.
"I suppose you're crazy about Rome," said Henry Gregg again. "There's a lot of culture here, and history, and all that; and—"
"I hate Rome!" said Mary Gowd.
Henry Gregg stared at her in bewilderment.
"Then why in Sam Hill don't you go back to England?"
"I'm thirty-seven years old. That's one reason why. And I look older. Oh, yes, I do. Thanks just the same. There are too many women in England already—too many half-starving shabby genteel. I earn enough to live on here—that is, I call it living. You couldn't. In the bad season, when there are no tourists, I live on a lire a day, including my rent."
Henry Gregg stood up.
"My land! Why don't you come to America?" He waved his arms. "America!"
Mary Gowd's brick-red cheeks grew redder.
"America!" she echoed. "When I see American tourists here throwing pennies in the Fountain of Trevi, so that they'll come back to Rome, I want to scream. By the time I save enough money to go to America I'll be an old woman and it will be too late. And if I did contrive to scrape together enough for my passage over I couldn't go to the United States in these clothes. I've seen thousands of American women here. If they look like that when they're just travelling about, what do they wear at home!"