come here at last,
because it matters most."

"That's what we all want to believe," said Gidding. "That's what we want
you to tell us."

He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But---- I am
afraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about.
We've got to be reminded. That, you know, is why we keep on asking."

He went on to question me where I had been, what I had done, what I made
of things. He'd never, he said, forgotten our two days' gossip in the
Levant, and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves that we
had broached then and left so open. I soon found myself talking very
freely to him. I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the
knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at his
touch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mind
comes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar degree that directness
and simplicity which is the distinctive American quality. I tried to
explain to his solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes just
exactly what I was making of things, of the world, of humanity, of
myself....

It was an odd theme for two men to attempt after dinner, servants
hovering about them, their two faces a little flushed by wine and good
eating, their keen interest masked from the others around them by a
gossiping affectation, their hands going out as they talked for matches
or cigarette, and before we had gone further than to fling out a few
intimations to each other our colloquy was interrupted by our host
standing up and by the general stir that preluded our return to feminine
society. "We've got more to say than this," said Gidding. "We've got to
_talk_." He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew out
mine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning and
afternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation. We
motored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, we
crossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of Washington
Irving near Yonkers on our way.

I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvington
that looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Gidding
opened his heart to me. I can see him now as he leant a little forward
over the table, with his wrists resting upon it, his long clean-shaven
face very solemn and earnest and grey against the hard American sunlight
in the greenery about us