"Pray, don't. That would be punishing my impertinence too severely. Yes, Mrs. Van Winkle spoke to me this morning, hearing I was from Harvard. She said she felt that those who were fellow-workers in one field should interchange thoughts. I suppose I stared, for she hastened to inform me that she had written a book which was pronounced to be a work of genius."
"Her naïveté is quite delightful!"
"Presently she went on to tell me that a painter had begged her to sit to him as Clio, when she was in Rome, and that her hands and feet had been modelled by a sculptor in Paris. I suppose that was naïve."
"Certainly it was. Most of us would have gone a roundabout way to convey the same information. We are all vain. My vanity is fed by the belief that people will find out what a nice person I am, without my giving a sort of auctioneer's inventory of my merits, as that dear innocent Mrs. Van Winkle does."
"Innocent? Well!... She told me her husband would be the next minister to England, and that she would not return there till then, as she did not choose to go about, having to explain herself. I thought—with the Paris sculptor and the modelling—that a foot-note might be explanation enough. But I have not an idea what she meant."
"She meant that the Van Winkles are not to be herded with common travelling Americans."
"I have been a common travelling American myself for the last three months."
"And I dare say you had sometimes to explain yourself."
"Never. I know too well the way in which my pushing countrymen are spoken of, to seek any one. Those who have sought me have had to do so without any 'explanation.'"
"Proud as Lucifer," thought Grace. "Clearly not the stuff of which saints are made." Then aloud, "How did you like Europe?"