Our new hotel, we discovered next morning, was duplicated in name by another, four doors down the street. During the day we heard the reason for this. A domestic difficulty had overtaken husband and wife and the two had separated, each keeping an interest in the serviceable name and a frontage on the familiar street. We were in the husband's hotel, under the very discreet ministrations of the young woman who had caused the break. "Do you quite like this?" Raymond had asked me. But he became reassured on seeing in the guest-book the names of two or three well-known and sufficiently respected compatriots. By the next day he was able to cast on Miss Brough, as she flitted (still discreetly) through her functions, the eye of a qualified idealization. I am sure he would never have viewed indulgently any such situation at home. But the poor, patient, cautious girl helped him toward realizing the sophistications and corruptions of European society, and so he welcomed her. But I believe he avoided speaking to her. She may have been hurt, or she may have been amused; or neither. Yet, after all, this contretemps was for him, I felt, but a prosaic substitute for something richer. A similar situation in Naples, say, taken at close range, might have quickened his interest considerably.

Next day there was something different for him to report. He had gone into a courtyard off Holborn, drawn by the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Four or five little girls were dancing, and some older women stood looking on. For a few moments he looked on too, probably with an effect of aloof and amused patronage. But patronage was not for that court.

Presently one of the younger women, who wore a hat full of messy plumes and carried a small fish in each hand by the tail, stepped up and invited him to trip a measure with her. "Trip a measure"—it has a fine Elizabethan or Jacobean sound, whether she used the precise expression or not. But Raymond demurred; at first politely; later, perhaps not so politely. But he was whisked into the dance and made to take several turns. He was so embarrassed that he called it all an "adventure." Possibly it was meant for a lesson in manners.

Thus Raymond in England. As he said, he liked the Continent better. I hope he showed to better advantage there, and I should have liked to see him there—to be with him there. For he rather put a brake on any measure of exuberance and momentum which I might have brought to England with me, and I could only trust that his strait-jacket was partly unlaced among the French and Italians. I think that likely, for with them he was, of course, an acknowledged and unmistakable foreigner. But my fortnight with him was cramped and uncomfortable; and when we parted at the American Exchange—I for Liverpool and he for Calais—I confess I had a slight feeling of relief. I felt, too, that my conduct, however native and unstudied, had pleased the Island quite as well as his.

At the Exchange itself he never read American newspapers—least of all, one from his own town. I believe, too, he avoided them on the Continent. Living a very special life, he meant to keep himself integral, uncontaminate. And behind us both was the other world, his own, all vital and astir.

Yes, I am aware that my prose is pedestrian, and that Europe—as it once was, to us—deserves a brighter and higher note. I will attempt, just here, a purple patch.

Europe, then,—the beacon, hope, and cynosure of our fresh, ingenuous youth—the glamorous realm afar which drew to itself from across the sea our eager artist-bands, pilgrims to the Old, the Stately, and the Fair; Europe, which reared above our dull horizon the towers of Oxford and of Notre Dame, sent up into our pale, empty sky the shimmering mirage of Venice, and cast across our workaday way the grave and noble shadow of Rome; Europe, which gave out through the varying voices of Correggio, Canova, Hugo, and Wagner the cry, so lofty and so piercing-sweet, of Art; Europe, which with titles and insignia and social grandeurs, once dazzled and bemused our inexperienced senses ... and so on.

Easy!

But worth while?

I shall not attempt to decide.

To-day Europe seems not all we once found it; and we, on the other hand, have come to be more than some of us at least once figured ourselves. We are beginning to have glamours and importances of our own.