"Very pretty," I said. "I wish we could live in such houses."

"Oh, they would not do at all for dear old fat, cold, cozy England.
You are quite different, you know, in everything from us in the
south; more phlegmatic, but then so much steadier. The men and the
houses are all the same."

I can hardly tell why, but even this wounded me. It seemed to me as
though she were inclined to put into one and the same category things
English, dull, useful, and solid; and that she was disposed to show a
sufficient appreciation for such necessaries of life, though she
herself had another and inner sense--a sense keenly alive to the
poetry of her own southern chime; and that I, as being English, was
to have no participation in this latter charm. An English husband
might do very well, the interests of the firm might make such an
arrangement desirable, such a mariage de convenance--so I argued to
myself--might be quite compatible with--with heaven only knows what
delights of superterrestial romance, from which I, as being an
English thick-headed lump of useful coarse mortality, was to be
altogether debarred. She had spoken to me of oranges, and having
finished the survey of the house, she offered me some sweet little
cakes. It could not be that of such things were the thoughts which
lay undivulged beneath the clear waters of those deep black eyes--
undivulged to me, though no one else could have so good a right to
read those thoughts! It could not be that that noble brow gave index
of a mind intent on the trade of which she spoke so often! Words of
other sort than any that had been vouchsafed to me must fall at times
from the rich curves of that perfect month.

So felt I then, pining for something to make me unhappy. Ah, me! I