dancing--they were unsatisfactory, intangible. I never could be sure
I really held a woman in my arms, and I never could remember a word
I had exchanged with them. But they are charming--that word describes
them 'down to the ground.'"

"That word 'thin' is good, too," she replied; "and I think it
describes their literature better than any other. They write
beautifully those Americans, they are witty, they are amusing, they
are entertaining, they delineate character with a master hand; they
give us an exact idea of their peculiar environment and conditions;
and the way they handle dialect is a marvel; but--they are thin; they
ring hollow; they are like sketches in pen-and-ink; there is no color,
no warmth, and above all, no perspective. I don't know that they are
even done in sharp black-and-white; to me the pervading tone is gray.
The American author depresses me; he makes me feel commonplace and new
and unballasted. I always feel as if I were the 'millionth woman in
superfluous herds'; and when one of those terrible American authors
attacks my type, and carves me up for the delectation of the public, I
shall go back to Wales, nor ever emerge from my towers again. And they
are so cool and calm and deliberate, and so horribly exact, even the
lesser lights. They always remind me of a medical student watching the
workings of the exposed nervous system of a chloroformed hare."

Dartmouth looked at her with some intensity in his gaze. "I am glad
your ideas are so singularly like my own," he said. "It is rather
remarkable they should be, but so it is. You have even a way of
putting your thoughts that strikes me as familiar, and which, out of
my natural egotism, I find attractive. But I wish you would go back to
your old castle; the world will spoil you."