“But this would be all salad-dressing, and nothing to put it on.” She was silent, and he yielded to another fancy. “We might imagine coming upon our former selves over there, and travelling round with them—a wedding journey 'en partie carree'.”
“Something like that. I call it a very poetical idea,” she said with a sort of provisionality, as if distrusting another ambush.
“It isn't so bad,” he admitted. “How young we were, in those days!”
“Too young to know what a good time we were having,” she said, relaxing her doubt for the retrospect. “I don't feel as if I really saw Europe, then; I was too inexperienced, too ignorant, too simple. I would like to go, just to make sure that I had been.” He was smiling again in the way he had when anything occurred to him that amused him, and she demanded, “What is it?”
“Nothing. I was wishing we could go in the consciousness of people who actually hadn't been before—carry them all through Europe, and let them see it in the old, simple-hearted American way.”
She shook her head. “You couldn't! They've all been!”
“All but about sixty or seventy millions,” said March.
“Well, those are just the millions you don't know, and couldn't imagine.”
“I'm not so sure of that.”
“And even if you could imagine them, you couldn't make them interesting. All the interesting ones have been, anyway.”