“I’m lucky to have found a sympathetic fellow traveller,” she said; “with a car.”

“You’re the first American I’ve ever met whose interest in history didn’t seem—­” He sought for an inoffensive word.

“Silly?  Oh!  I admit it.  It’s true of a lot of us.  Most of us.  We come over to Europe as if it hadn’t anything to do with us except to supply us with old pictures and curios generally.  We come sight-seeing.  It’s romantic.  It’s picturesque.  We stare at the natives—­like visitors at a Zoo.  We don’t realize that we belong....  I know our style....  But we aren’t all like that.  Some of us are learning a bit better than that.  We have one or two teachers over there to lighten our darkness.  There’s Professor Breasted for instance.  He comes sometimes to my father’s house.  And there’s James Harvey Robinson and Professor Hutton Webster.  They’ve been trying to restore our memory.”

“I’ve never heard of any of them,” said Sir Richmond.

“You hear so little of America over here.  It’s quite a large country and all sorts of interesting things happen there nowadays.  And we are waking up to history.  Quite fast.  We shan’t always be the most ignorant people in the world.  We are beginning to realize that quite a lot of things happened between Adam and the Mayflower that we ought to be told about.  I allow it’s a recent revival.  The United States has been like one of those men you read about in the papers who go away from home and turn up in some distant place with their memories gone.  They’ve forgotten what their names were or where they lived or what they did for a living; they’ve forgotten everything that matters.  Often they have to begin again and settle down for a long time before their memories come back.  That’s how it has been with us.  Our memory is just coming back to us.”

“And what do you find you are?”

“Europeans.  Who came away from kings and churches-@-and Corinthian capitals.”

“You feel all this country belongs to you?”

“As much as it does to you.”  Sir Richmond smiled radiantly at her.  “But if I say that America belongs to me as much as it does to you?”

“We are one people,” she said.

“We?”

“Europe.  These parts of Europe anyhow.  And ourselves.”

“You are the most civilized person I’ve met for weeks and weeks.”

“Well, you are the first civilized person I’ve met in Europe for a long time.  If I understand you.”

“There are multitudes of reasonable, civilized people in Europe.”

“I’ve heard or seen very little of them.

“They’re scattered, I admit.”

“And hard to find.”

“So ours is a lucky meeting.  I’ve wanted a serious talk to an American for some time.  I want to know very badly what you think you are up to with the world,—­our world.”

“I’m equally anxious to know what England thinks she is doing.  Her ways recently have been a little difficult to understand.  On any hypothesis—­that is honourable to her.”