Like a good and valiant Californian she was assuring herself that she had
seen nothing like this in Europe, and that she really preferred it to
art galleries and dilapidated old ruins. But as a matter of fact she had
returned to California with dragging feet and was merely staving off the
disheartening moment when her ruthless candor would force her to admit it.
San Francisco was all very well, and in this dazzling light that compact
mass of houses swarming over the city's hills and valleys, with sudden
palms in high gardens and a tree here and there, produced the impression
that all were white with red roofs, and looked not unlike Genoa. But it
seemed quite unromantic and uninspiring to a girl who had just paid her
first brief visit to the old world, an interval, moreover, that had been
without a responsibility, cut her off so completely from her general life
that when variously addressed "Mademoiselle," "Signorina," "Senorita," she
ceased almost at once to feel either surprised or flattered. If she had not
forbidden herself to dream she would still have been Alexina Groome with
a future to sketch with her own adventurous pencil; and to fill in at her
pleasure.
But although she was free in a sense she was not free to live in Europe.
She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would
not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters,
with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it
would also deprive him of his surest social prop.
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