every one
said the younger generation had gone to the dogs since the war, and the
world would never amount to anything again. But it seemed to pick up,
didn't it?"

The boy turned and looked at her squarely for the first time, his eyes
meeting hers. Mary looked at him. She even swayed toward him a little,
her lips parted. There was about her a breathlessness, an expectancy. So
they sat for a moment, and between them the air was electric, vibrant.
Then, slowly, he relaxed, sat back, slumped a little on the bench. Over
his face, that for a moment had been alight with something vital, there
crept again the look of defeat, of sombre indifference. At sight of that
look Mary Hubbell's jaw set. She leaned forward. She clasped her fine
large hands tight. She did not look at the gigolo, but out, across the
blue Mediterranean, and beyond it. Her voice was low and a little
tremulous and she spoke in English only.

"It isn't finished here--here in Europe. But it's sick. Back home, in
America, though, it's alive. Alive! And growing. I wish I could make you
understand what it's like there. It's all new, and crude, maybe, and
ugly, but it's so darned healthy and sort of clean. I love it. I love
every bit of it. I know I sound like a flag-waver but I don't care. I
mean it. And I know it's sentimental, but I'm proud of it. The kind of
thing I feel about the United States is the kind of thing Mencken sneers
at. You don't know who Mencken is. He's a critic who pretends to despise
everything because he's really a sentimentalist and afraid somebody'll
find it out. I don't say I don't appreciate the beauty of all this Italy
and France and England and Germany. But it doesn't get me the way just
the mention of a name will get me back home. This trip, for example.
Why, last summer four of us--three other girls and I--motored from
Wisconsin to California, and we drove every inch of the way ourselves.
The Santa Fe Trail! The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway! The Lincoln Highway!
The Dixie Highway! The Yellowstone Trail! The very sound of those words
gives me a sort of prickly feeling. They mean something so big and vital
and new. I get a thrill out of them that I haven't had once over here.
Why even this," she threw out a hand that included and dismissed the
whole sparkling panorama before her, "this doesn't begin to give the
jolt that I got out of Walla Walla, and Butte, and Missoula, and
Spokane, and Seattle, and Albuquerque. We drove all day, and ate h