pilgrims, as also with that of her knowing them from
afar, marking them easily, each and all, and recog
nising not less promptly that they had ever new
lights for her new lights on their own darkness.
She gave herself up at last, and it was a consumma
tion like another: what she should have come to the
National Gallery for to-day would be to watch the
copyists and reckon the Baedekers. That perhaps
was the moral of a menaced state of health that one
would sit in public places and count the Americans.
It passed the time in a manner; but it seemed already
the second line of defence, and this notwithstanding
the pattern, so unmistakable, of her country-folk.
They were cut out as by scissors, coloured, labelled,
mounted; but their relation to her failed to act
they somehow did nothing for her. Partly, no
doubt, they didn't so much as notice or know her,
didn't even recognise their community of collapse
with her, the sign on her, as she sat there, that for
her too Europe was " tough." It came to her idly
thus for her humour could still play that she
didn't seem then the same success with them as with
the inhabitants of London, who had taken her up on
scarce more of an acquaintance. She could wonder
if they would be different should she go back with
that glamour attached; and she could also wonder,
if it came to that, whether she should ever go back.
Her friends straggled past, at any rate, in all the
vividness of their absent criticism, and she had even
at last the sense of taking a mean advantage.

[[316]]

p315 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p316w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p317

v?