the torch of Greek art might be handed on.

She began by telling me that she had never been so frightened in her life.
She knew, of course, how dreadfully learned I was, and when, just as she
was going to begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was in the
room, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. Then (with a flying
dimple) she had remembered Emerson's line--wasn't it Emerson's?--that
beauty is its own excuse for _seeing_, and that had made her feel a little
more confident, since she was sure that no one _saw_ beauty more vividly
than she--as a child she used to sit for hours gazing at an Etruscan vase
on the bookcase in the library, while her sisters played with their
dolls--and if _seeing_ beauty was the only excuse one needed for talking
about it, why, she was sure I would make allowances and not be _too_
critical and sarcastic, especially if, as she thought probable, I had
heard of her having lost her poor husband, and how she had to do it for
the baby.

Being abundantly assured of my sympathy on these points, she went on to
say that she had always wanted so much to consult me about her lectures.
Of course, one subject wasn't enough (this view of the limitations of
Greek art as a "subject" gave me a startling idea of the rate at which a
successful lecturer might exhaust the universe); she must find others; she
had not ventured on any as yet, but she had thought of Tennyson--didn't I
_love_ Tennyson? She _worshipped_ him so that she was sure she could help
others to understand him; or what did I think of a "course" on Raphael or
Michelangelo--or on the heroines of Shakespeare? There were some fine
steel-engravings of Raphael's Madonnas and of the Sistine ceiling in her
mother's library, and she had seen Miss Cushman in several Shakespearian
_roles_, so that on these subjects also she felt qualified to speak with
authority.