Her eyes were perhaps just too round and too inveterately surprised,3 but her lips had a certain mild decision and her teeth, when she showed them, were charming. About her neck she wore what ladies call, I believe, a ‘ruche’4 fastened with a very small pin of pink coral, and in her hand she carried a fan made of plaited straw and adorned with pink ribbon. She wore a scanty black silk dress. She spoke with slow soft neatness, even without smiles showing the prettiness of her teeth, and she seemed extremely pleased, in fact quite fluttered, at the prospect of my demonstrations. These went forward very smoothly after I had moved the portfolios out of their corner and placed a couple of chairs near a lamp. The photographs were usually things I knew – large views of Switzerland, Italy and Spain, landscapes, reproductions of famous buildings, pictures and statues. I said what I could for them, and my companion, looking at them as I held them up, sat perfectly still, her straw fan raised to her under-lip and gently, yet, as I could feel, almost excitedly, rubbing it. Occasionally, as I laid one of the pictures down, she said without confidence, which would have been too much: ‘Have you seen that place?’ I usually answered that I had seen it several times – I had been a great traveller, though I was somehow particularly admonished not to swagger – and then I felt her look at me askance for a moment with her pretty eyes. I had asked her at the outset whether she had been to Europe; to this she had answered ‘No, no, no’ – almost as much below her breath as if the image of such an event scarce, for solemnity, brooked phrasing. But after that, though she never took her eyes off the pictures, she said so little that I feared she was at last bored. Accordingly when we had finished one portfolio I offered, if she desired it, to desist. I rather guessed the exhibition really held her, but her reticence puzzled me and I wanted to make her speak. I turned round to judge better and then saw a faint flush in each of her cheeks. She kept waving her little fan to and fro. Instead of looking at me she fixed her eyes on the remainder of the collection, which leaned, in its receptacle, against the table.

‘Won’t you show me that?’ she quavered, drawing the long breath of a person launched and afloat but conscious of rocking a little.5

‘With pleasure,’ I answered, ‘if you’re really not tired.’

‘Oh I’m not tired a bit. I’m just fascinated.’ With which as I took up the other portfolio she laid her hand on it, rubbing it softly. ‘And have you been here too?’

On my opening the portfolio it appeared I had indeed been there. One of the first photographs was a large view of the Castle of Chillon6 by the Lake of Geneva. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘I’ve been many a time. Isn’t it beautiful?’ And I pointed to the perfect reflexion of the rugged rocks and pointed towers in the clear still water. She didn’t say ‘Oh enchanting!’ and push it away to see the next picture. She looked a while and then asked if it weren’t where Bonnivard, about whom Byron wrote,7 had been confined. I assented, trying to quote Byron’s verses, but not quite bringing it off.

She fanned herself a moment and then repeated the lines correctly, in a soft flat voice but with charming conviction. By the time she had finished, she was nevertheless blushing. I complimented her and assured her she was perfectly equipped for visiting Switzerland and Italy. She looked at me askance again, to see if I might be serious, and I added that if she wished to recognise Byron’s descriptions she must go abroad speedily – Europe was getting sadly dis-Byronised. ‘How soon must I go?’ she thereupon enquired.

‘Oh I’ll give you ten years.’

‘Well, I guess I can go in that time,’ she answered as if measuring her words.

‘Then you’ll enjoy it immensely,’ I said; ‘you’ll find it of the highest interest.’ Just then I came upon a photograph of some nook in a foreign city which I had been very fond of and which recalled tender memories. I discoursed (as I suppose) with considerable spirit; my companion sat listening breathless.

‘Have you been very long over there?’ she asked some time after I had ceased.

‘Well, it mounts up, put all the times together.’

‘And have you travelled everywhere?’

‘I’ve travelled a good deal. I’m very fond of it and happily have been able.’

Again she turned on me her slow shy scrutiny. ‘Do you know the foreign languages?’

‘After a fashion.’

‘Is it hard to speak them?’

‘I don’t imagine you’d find it so,’ I gallantly answered.

‘Oh I shouldn’t want to speak – I should only want to listen.’ Then on a pause she added: ‘They say the French theatre’s so beautiful.’

‘Ah the best in the world.’

‘Did you go there very often?’

‘When I was first in Paris I went every night.’

‘Every night!’ And she opened her clear eyes very wide.