There were other difficulties. She had nearly exhausted her funds. She didn't wish to return to the United States. Not at the moment, anyhow. Yet she couldn't get a position without a character.
This last she had learned recently, after several bitter experiences. Europeans seemed firmly persuaded that a character existed not in yourself but in the minds of other people, or rather in their handwriting. In the United States a good presence was worth a thousand good characters and your own opinion of yourself, expressed with imaginative brilliance, went much further than other people's opinion of you, expressed with dullness. In Europe, the reverse was true.
Would he make out a good character for her, and have it on tap within easy reach in case she referred employers to him?
She was sure that any testimonial coming from him—yes, from him—
"Oh, I know you're a mystery," she said, in answer to his deprecatory gesture. "But not an ordinary mystery. A mystery linked to the pink of propriety is a sublime mystery. Like Mrs. Grundy's husband, whom you remind me of. No one has ever identified that mysterious man. Yet who'd have the courage to turn down a character made out by Mr. Grundy?"
She told him of her break with Claude, of her situation as the companion of Henriette, and of her experience with M. St. Hilaire as a result of Burley's interference.
"I left Brussels the very next day."
"For Coblenz?"
"Via Coblenz, for Munich, to see you, if possible. It was a Munich address you gave me, on board the 'Baronia'."
"I left Munich some time ago."