“This is positively the first day since my arrival in England that I haven’t been, more or less,” she answered.
“Oh?” he wondered sympathetically.
“You can’t think how dépaysée I’ve felt. After having lived all one’s life in Prague, suddenly to find oneself translated to the mistress-ship of an English country house,” she submitted.
“In Prague? I thought you had lived in Rome and Paris, chiefly,” he exclaimed.
“Prague is a figure of rhetoric,” she reminded him. “I mean the capital of Bohemia. Wasn’t my father a sculptor? And wasn’t I born in a studio? And haven’t my playmates and companions always been of Florizel the loyal subjects? So whether you call it Rome or Paris or Florence or Naples, it was Prague, none the less.”
“At that rate, I live in Prague myself, and we’re compatriots,” said Will.
“That’s no doubt why I don’t feel homesick any more,” she responded, smiling. “Where two of the faithful are gathered together they can form a miniature Prague of their own. If I decide to stay in England, I shall send for a lot of my Prague friends to come and visit me, and you can send for an equal number of yours; and then we’ll turn this bright particular corner of the British Empire into a province of Bohemia, and the County may be horrified with reason. But meanwhile, let’s be Pragueians in practice as well as theory. Let’s go to the strawberry beds, and steal some strawberries,” was her conclusion.
She walked a little in front of him. Her garden-hat had come off, and she was swinging it at her side, by its ribbons. Will noticed the strong, lithe sway and rhythm of her body, as she moved. “What a woman she is,” he thought; “how one feels her sex.” And with that, he all at once became aware of a singular depression. “Surely,” a malevolent little voice within him argued, “woman that she is, and having passed all her life with the subjects of Florizel, surely, surely, she must have had... experiences. She must have loved—she must have been loved.” And (as if it was any of his business!) a kind of vague jealousy of her past, a kind of suspiciousness and irrelevant resentment, began to burn, a small dull spot of pain, somewhere in his breast.
She, apparently, was in the highest spirits. There was something expressive of joyousness in the mere way she tripped over the grass, swinging her garden-hat like a basket; and presently she fell to singing, merrily, in a light voice, that prettiest of old French songs, Les Trots Princesses, dancing forward to its measure:
“Derrièr’ chez mon père,