“Nay, not everything!” he says, interruptingly. “In volume of water they may be; but far from it in other respects. In some it is superior to them all—Rhine, Rhone, ah! Hippocrene itself!”
His tongue is at length getting loosed.
“What other respects?” she asks.
“The forms reflected in it,” he answers hesitatingly.
“Not those of vegetation! Surely our oaks, elms, and poplars cannot be compared with the tall palms and graceful tree ferns of the tropics?”
“No; not those.”
“Our buildings neither, if photography tells truth, which it should. Those wonderful structures—towers, temples, pagodas—of which it has given us the fac similes—far excel anything we have on the Wye—or anything in England. Even our Tintern, which we think so very grand, were but as nothing to them. Isn’t that so?”
“True,” he says, assentingly. “One must admit the superiority of Oriental architecture.”
“But you’ve not told me what form our English river reflects, so much to your admiration!”
He has a fine opportunity for poetical reply. The image is in his mind—her own—with the word upon his tongue, “woman’s.” But he shrinks from giving it utterance. Instead, retreating from the position he had assumed, he rejoins evasively:—