he found her very intelligent he suspected she gave this as a reason
because he was a German and she had heard the Germans were rich in
culture. He wondered what form of culture Mr. and Mrs. Day had
brought back from Italy, Greece and Palestine--they had travelled
for two years and been everywhere--especially when their daughter
said: "I wanted father and mother to see the best things. I kept
them three hours on the Acropolis. I guess they won't forget that!"
Perhaps it was of Phidias and Pericles they were thinking,
Vogelstein reflected, as they sat ruminating in their rugs. Pandora
remarked also that she wanted to show her little sister everything
while she was comparatively unformed ("comparatively!" he mutely
gasped); remarkable sights made so much more impression when the
mind was fresh: she had read something of that sort somewhere in
Goethe. She had wanted to come herself when she was her sister's
age; but her father was in business then and they couldn't leave
Utica. The young man thought of the little sister frisking over the
Parthenon and the Mount of Olives and sharing for two years, the
years of the school-room, this extraordinary pilgrimage of her
parents; he wondered whether Goethe's dictum had been justified in
this case. He asked Pandora if Utica were the seat of her family,
if it were an important or typical place, if it would be an
interesting city for him, as a stranger, to see. His companion
replied frankly that this was a big question, but added that all the
same she would ask him to "come and visit us at our home" if it
weren't that they should probably soon leave it.

"Ah, you're going to live elsewhere?" Vogelstein asked, as if that
fact too would be typical.

"Well, I'm working for New York. I flatter myself I've loosened