“I know more about them than you might think,” she said, with her shy, neat little smile. “I mean by reading; I have read a great deal I have not only read Byron; I have read histories and guidebooks. I know I shall like it.”
“I understand your case,” I rejoined. “You have the native American passion,—the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is primordial,—antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows us something we have dreamt of.”
“I think that is very true,” said Caroline Spencer. “I have dreamt of everything; I shall know it all!”
“I am afraid you have wasted a great deal of time.”
“Oh, yes, that has been my great wickedness.”
The people about us had begun to scatter; they were taking their leave. She got up and put out her hand to me, timidly, but with a peculiar brightness in her eyes.
“I am going back there,” I said, as I shook hands with her. “I shall look out for you.”
“I will tell you,” she answered, “if I am disappointed.”
And she went away, looking delicately agitated, and moving her little straw fan.