" (A remark that John Derby had made came into her mind as
she spoke: "You will find your own countrymen go in for the real thing,
where the foreigner spends all his time talking about it.")

Don Giovanni was too thoroughly a European to become argumentative. "You
see, I speak only from hearsay," he continued, with that air of agreeing
with her which only the Latin possesses. "I have always been led to
suppose that love plays a very small part in the lives of your
countrymen." He held the thread of the conversation, but his manner said
plainly that he only waited humbly to be enlightened. "I should have
said," he went on, "an illustration of love in my country as contrasted
with yours is shown in the gardens--just as our gardens bloom all the
year, so love blooms always in our hearts; flowers and love, they go
together; nowhere in the world are they so perfect as in Italy."

"So cultivated?" asked Nina.

He took no notice of the quip. "If to cultivate is to think of and to
nurture, to strive always for greater perfection, then, yes, let us say
cultivated."

There was a challenge; there was also a look of pity that annoyed her.
It was this that she resented. She felt that she was being enmeshed in
an invisible web, and she sought for a means of escape. Seeing none she
might be sure of, she dropped the figurative speech and took refuge in
platitudes.

"In America we admire a man for what he does--over here you do nothing.
Each day for you is the same. You spend your time as a woman might,
unless you go into the army, the church, or diplomacy. For instance,
you, yourself, what is your ambition? Is there anything you are trying
to do?"

Indolently he shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-lazy arrogance he
answered, "Why should I try to create a personal and trivial future,
when I can, without striving, merely survive from a far more glorious
past? Listen, Mademoiselle, do you think as much can be accomplished by
one short generation as by many? For instance, could a garden such as
this be produced in the lifetime of one man?" He waved his arm in a
circular motion. "It is not alone its plan and its fountains, and its
green shrubbery that make it what it is, but the history of human lives
that is planted in its every turn and corner. The gardens of America are
but newly born from the minds of your landscape architects; in most of
them the trees are but newly planted. This garden was already stately
with ilex and cypr