offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She answered
to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much that she was
glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling; all that she
would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to her again.
She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship as the
Colmannia did not make him want to go.

At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well. He
had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a
Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he had
persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards that
he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological juggle
which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next day to
get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he also got a
plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so that they
might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all the facts.




IV.

From this time their decision to go was none the less explicit because so
perfectly tacit.

They began to amass maps and guides. She got a Baedeker for Austria and
he got a Bradshaw for the continent, which was never of the least use
there, but was for the present a mine of unavailable information. He got
a phrase-book, too, and tried to rub up his German. He used to read
German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic