“I thought you were going with Beatrice to the last performance of the Walkyrie?”

“Beatrice is going there. I said I wouldn’t.”

“Does it bore you?”

“It bores me.”

“Don’t you like the theatre?”

“So-so, you know.”

“Still, any way you prefer music?”

“Yes, I prefer music; but even that doesn’t make me enthuse.”

“It seems to me, Vittoria, that you enthuse for very few things in the world;” and she tempered the observation with a quiet smile.

“I enthuse over nothing, mamma; really over nothing,” replied Vittoria emphatically.