s--down there," (with the tip of a vertical finger she touched the
earth), "at the Antipodes."

"To this present hour," said Anthony, with impressive slowness, "I
personally owe so great a debt of thankfulness, it would be churlish of
me even to hint a criticism. And yet--and yet--how shall I express it?
_Eppur' si muove_. It moves, it hastes away;--while I could wish it to
remain forever, fixed as the Northern Star. Do they know, in your part
of Italy, any means by which the sparkling minutes can be prevailed
upon to stay their flight?"

"That is a sort of knowledge," Susanna answered, with a movement of the
head, "for which, I fear, one would have to go to a meta-physical and
thrifty land like Germany. We are not in the least metaphysical or
thrifty in my part of Italy. We allow the sparkling minutes to slip
between our fingers, like gold between the fingers of a spendthrift.
But--but we rather enjoy the feeling, as they slip."

"I wonder," Anthony hazarded, "whether you would take it very much
amiss if--if I should make a remark?"

Susanna's eyes lighted, dangerously.

"I wonder," she said, on a key of dubious meditation.

"I am not easily put off," said he, with firmness. "I am moved to
remark upon the astonishing facility with which you speak English.
Now--do your worst."

Susanna smiled.

"It would take more than that to provoke me to do my worst," she said.
"English is as natural to me as my mother-tongue. I always had English
governesses. Everyone has English governesses in Italy nowadays, you
know."

"Yes," he said, "I know; and they are generally Irish, are they not?
Of course you 've lived a great deal in England?" he surmised.

"On the contrary," she set him right, "this is my first visit here."

"Is it possible?" he marvelled. "I thought the true Oxford accent
could only be acquired on the spot."

"Have I the true Oxford accent?" Susanna brightly doubted, eye-brows
raised.

"Thank heaven," he gravely charged her, "thank heaven, kneeling, that
you have n't the true Oxford manner. Does England," he asked, "seem
very rum?"

"Yes," she answered, with immediate candour, "England seems very
rum--but not so rum as it might, perhaps, if I had n't read so many
English novels. English novels are the only novels you 're allowed to
read, in my part of Italy, when you 're young."

"Ah," said Anthony, nodding, "that's because our English novelists are
such dabs at the art of omission." And