“Showing her the beauties of your character!” I exclaimed derisively.

“I said something about the defects, too,” said Dicky modestly, “though not so much.  And I was getting on beautifully, though it isn’t so easy with an English girl.  They don’t seem to think it’s proper to analyse your character.  They’re so maidenly.”

“And so unenterprising,” I said, but I said it to myself.

“Isabel was actually beginning to lead up to the subject,” Dicky went on.  “She asked me the other day if it was true that all American men were flirts.  In another week I should have felt that she would know what was proposing to her.”

“And you were going to wait another week?”

“Well, a man wants every advantage,” said Dicky blandly.

“Did you explain to Isabel that you were only joining our party in the hope of meeting her accidentally soon again?”

“What else,” asked he in pained surprise, “should I have joined it for?  No, I didn’t; I hadn’t the chance, for one thing.  You took the first train back to Rome next morning, you know.  She wasn’t up.”

“True,” I responded.  “Momma said not another hour of her husband’s Aunt Caroline would she ever willingly endure.  She said she would spend her entire life, if necessary, in avoiding the woman.”  But Dicky had not followed the drift of my thought.

I added vaguely, “I hope she will understand it”—­I really couldn’t be more definite—­and bade Mr. Dod good-night.  He held my hand absent-mindedly for a moment, and mentioned the effectiveness of the Ponte Vecchio from that point of view.

“I didn’t feel bound to change my tickets less ten per cent.,” he said hopefully, “and we’re sure to come across them early and often.  In the meantime you might try and soften me a little—­about Lot’s wife.”

Next day, in the Ufizzi, it was no surprise to meet the Miss Binghams.  We had a guilty consciousness of fellow-citizenship as we recognised them, and did our best to look as if two weeks were quite long enough to be forgotten in, but they seemed charitable and forgiving on this account, said they had looked out for us everywhere, and had we seen the cuttings in the Vatican?

“The statues, you know,” explained Miss Cora kindly, seeing that we did not comprehend.  “Marvellous—­simply marvellous!  We enjoyed nothing so much as the marble department.  It takes it out of you though—­we were awfully done afterwards.”

I wondered what Phidias would have said to the “cuttings,” and whether the Miss Binghams imagined it a Briticism.  It also occurred to me that one should never mix one’s colloquialisms; but that, of course, did not prevent their coming round with us.  I believe they did it partly to diffuse their guide among a larger party.  He was hanging, as they came up, upon Miss Cora’s reluctant earring, so to speak, and she was mechanically saying, “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!” to his representations.  “I suppose,” said she inadvertently, “there is no way of preventing their giving one information,” and after that when she hospitably pressed the guide upon us we felt at liberty to be unappreciative.