es altogether, that whatever else is wrong about America
that is where America is most clearly wrong. I read that this morning,
and directly I read it I thought, 'Yes, that's exactly it! Mr. Direck is
overdoing the development of personalities.'"

"Me!"

"Yes. I like talking to you and I don't like talking to you. And I see
now it is because you keep on talking of my Personality and your
Personality. That makes me uncomfortable. It's like having some one
following me about with a limelight. And in a sort of way I do like it.
I like it and I'm flattered by it, and then I go off and dislike it,
dislike the effect of it. I find myself trying to be what you have told
me I am--sort of acting myself. I want to glance at looking-glasses to
see if I am keeping it up. It's just exactly what Mr. Britling says in
his book about American women. They act themselves, he says; they get a
kind of story and explanation about themselves and they are always
trying to make it perfectly plain and clear to every one. Well, when you
do that you can't think nicely of other things."

"We like a clear light on people," said Mr. Direck.

"We don't. I suppose we're shadier," said Cecily.

"You're certainly much more in half-tones," said Mr. Direck. "And I
confess it's the half-tones get hold of me. But still you haven't told
me, Miss Cissie, what you think I ought to do with myself. Here I am,
you see, very much at your disposal. What sort of business do you think
it's my duty to go in for?"

"That's for some one with more experience than I have, to tell you. You
should ask Mr. Britling."

"I'd rather have it from you."

"I don't even know for myself," she said.

"So why shouldn't we start to find out together?" he asked.

It was her tantalising habit to ignore all such tentatives.

"One can't help the feeling that one is in the world for something more
than oneself," she said....

Section 8

Soon Mr. Direck could measure the time that was left to him at the Dower
House no longer by days but by hours. His luggage was mostly packed, his
tickets to Rotterdam, Cologne, Munich, Dresden, Vienna, were all in
order. And things were still very indefinite between him and Cecily. But
God has not made Americans clean-shaven and firm-featured for nothing,
and he determined that matters must be brought to some sort of
definition before he embarked upon travels that were rapidly losing
their attractiveness in this concentration of his attentio