"Oh, _French!_" Marise was immensely amused, and then, remembering that
the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment,
you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated
cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and
philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed,
Chinese porcelains, Provençal poetry, Persian shawls . . ."

"What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with some
curiosity.

Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in Minnesota,
what did you suppose? No European could ever take culture so seriously.
You know how any convert always has a thousand times more fervor than
the fatigued members of the faith who were born to it."

"Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.

"Yes, I always envied Henry James the conviction he seems to have had,
all his life, that Europeans are a good deal more unlike other people
than I ever found them. It may be obtuseness on my part, but I never
could see that people who lived in the Basses-Pyrénées are any more
cultivated or had any broader horizons than people who live in the Green
Mountains. My own experience is that when you actually live with people,
day after day, year after year, you find about the same range of
possibilities in any group of them. But I never advance this theory to
Eugenia, who would be horrified to know that I find a strong family
likeness between her New York circle and my neighbors here."

She had been aware that Marsh was looking at her as she spoke. What a