“I shouldn’t do it often, Eva, if I were you.”

“No, I think it inexplicable, and yet it’s already beginning to bore me. One grows so accustomed to the incomprehensible.”

“Everything’s incomprehensible.”

“Yes ... and everything’s a bore.”

“Eva!” he said, with a soft, reproachful laugh.

“I give up the fight. I shall just sit in my rocking-chair ... and look at the rain.”

“There was a time when you used to see the beautiful side of my country.”

“Your country? Which you would be glad to leave to-morrow to go to the Paris Exhibition!”

“I’ve never seen anything.”

“How humble you are to-day!”