Italy.  My mind was in a whirl.  Which was best?  Why should I so love one, and why did the other bore me?  I was afraid to follow the yearnings of my own soul, and yet I knew that only there lay happiness.  To make up one’s mind to be true to one’s love—­even if it be only the love of beauty—­requires courage.  And the trial of my bravery came to me on that curve of the Bay of Naples.  I dared.  I am daring now.  I am still true to the Orient.

As I look back I remember that the phrase, “See Naples and die,” gave me the hazy idea that it must be very beautiful, but just how I did not know, and did not particularly care.  I knew the bay would be lovely; I only hoped it would be as lovely as I expected.  Celebrated beauties are so apt to be disappointing.  I imagined that all Neapolitan boys wore their shirt-collars open and that a wavy lock of coal-black hair was continually blowing across their brown foreheads.  That eternal porcelain miniature has maddened me with its omnipresence ever since I was a child.  But aside from these half-thoughts and dim expectations I had no hopes at all.  I was prepared to be gently and tranquilly pleased; not wildly excited, but satisfied; not happy, but contented with its beauty.  But I have found more.  The bay is more lovely than I anticipated, and I have discovered that Italian hair is not coal-black; it begins to be black at the roots, and evidently had every intention of being black when it started out, but it grew weary of so much energy, and ended in sundry shades of russet brown and sunburned tans.  It generally has these two colors, black and tan, like the silky coat of a fine terrier, and it waves in lovely little tendrils, and is much prettier than hair either all black or all brown.

But I am ahead of my narrative.  I am trying to decide whether Naples is more beautifully situated than Constantinople.  Constantinople, being Oriental, fascinates me more.  Western Europe begins to seem a little tame and conventional to me, because the pagan in my nature is so highly developed.  I detest civilization except for my own selfish bodily comfort.  When I eat and sleep I want the creature comforts.  Otherwise I love those thieving Arab servants in Cairo (who would steal the very shoes off your feet if you dropped off for your forty winks) because of their uncivilization and unconventionality.  Civilization has not yet spoiled them.  I bought rugs in Cairo, and often when I went unexpectedly into my room I found my Arab man-servant on his knees studying their patterns and feeling their silkiness.  I had everything locked up, or perhaps he would have made worse use of his time; but somehow the childishness of the East appeals to me.