Her talk ran on like a limpid brook, with a musical ripple playing
ever on the surface. As for Bernard, he helped her about the ship
like a brother, as she moved lightly around, with her sylph-like
little form, among the ropes and capstans. Melissa Hked to be
helped, she said; she didn't believe one bit in woman's rights;
no, indeed; she was a great deal too fond of being taken care of
for that. And who wouldn't take care of her,--that delicate little
thing,--like some choice small masterpiece of cunning workmanship?
Why, she almost looked as if she were made of Venetian glass, and
a fall on deck would shatter her into a thousand fragments.
And her talk all the way was of the joys of Europe--the castles
and abbeys she was leaving behind, the pictures and statues she had
seen and admired, the pictures and statues she had left unvisited.
"Somebody told me in Paris," she said to me one day, as she hung on
my arm on deck, and looked up into my face confidingly with that
childlike smile of hers, "the only happy time in an American woman's
life is the period when she's just got over the first poignant regret
at having left Europe, and hasn't just reached the point when she
makes up her mind that, come what will, she really MUST go back
again.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142