"I haven't heard one single word of English since we came, and it isn't Pennsylvania Dutch either. Nothing but outlanders. Where do they come from?"
Stephen explained the appreciative foreign population; then again he took Ellen by the arm. The museum had been his refuge a score of times while Hilda selected beautiful clothes or lay abed. He had made it a point of pride to know it thoroughly.
"I want you to get the impression of a voyage through the world. You must come often and stay all the time of your visit in just one section—here, for instance, and think of the pyramids and the palms and the yellow sand and the Sphinx and the Egyptian girl who wore that jewel in her brown ear, and of the jealous lover who stabbed her to the heart with that dagger, and of the tents of the Arabs on the yellow sand.
"And here you may think of ladies in voluminous skirts and tight waists and high-heeled slippers, who made love to gay gentlemen under this rococo ceiling and prinked before these mirrors." Stephen stopped before a mirror and looked into the dark eyes reflected there. In imagination he kissed Ellen's red lips. For him as well as for her it was a golden hour.
"Do you suppose I'll ever see it again?" asked Ellen sadly.
"Certainly!"
"With you?"
There was a savage defiance in Stephen's "Why not, pray?"
Ellen sighed; she had expected her father to show her the world, and she had been disappointed. Then Stephen's closer touch restored her content.
"Le Prophète" is not the greatest of operas, but the greatest tenor and one of the greatest sopranos were to sing and there were new and gorgeous stage-settings—it would serve as a good primer for Ellen. Stephen was amused when he thought of Fetzer and the display of women's bodies in the boxes, pitiful, thin bodies, and unpleasant fat bodies, and watching, he read her thoughts. Fetzer had, however, an advantage, she needed to look with but one eye, and that she fixed upon the stage where she found plenty to occupy and amaze her.