given ourselves cricks in the necks, staring up
at the divine incompleteness of Cologne Cathedral. And all through
Crucifixions, cathedrals, table d'hotes, I have been deadly, _deadly_
homesick--homesick as none but one that has been a member of a large
family and has been out into the world on his or her own account, for
the first time, can understand. When first I drove away through the
park, my sensations were something like those that we all used to
experience, on the rare occasions when father, as a treat, took one or
other of us out on an excursion with him--the _honor_ great, but the
_pleasure_ small.

It seems to myself, as if I had not laughed once since we set
off!--yes--_once_ I did, at the recollection of an old joke of Bobby's,
that we all thought very silly at the time, but that strikes me as
irresistibly funny now that it recurs to me in the midst of strange
scenes, and of jokeless foreigners.

After forty, people do not laugh at absolutely _nothing_. They may be
very easily moved to mirth, as, indeed, to do him justice, Sir Roger is;
but they do not laugh for the pure physical pleasure of grinning. The
weight of the absolute _tete-a-tete_ of a honey-moon, which has proved
trying to a more violent love than mine, is oppressing me.

At home, if I grew tired of talking to one, I could talk to another. If
I waxed weary of Bobby's sea-tales, I might refresh myself with
listening to the Brat's braggings about Oxford--with Tou Tou's murdered
French lesson:

J'aime, I love.
Tu aimes, Thou lovest.
Il aime, He loves.

How many thousand years ago, the labored conjugation of that verb seems
to me!

_Now_, if I do not converse with Sir Roger, I must remain silent. And,
somehow, I cannot talk to him now as fluently as I used. Before--during
our short previous acquaintance--where I used to pester the poor man
with filial aspirations that he could not reciprocate, there seemed no
end to the things I had to say to him. I felt as if I could have told
him any thing. I bubbled over with silly jests.

It never occurred to me to think whether I pleased him or not; but
_now_--_now_, the sense of my mental inferiority--of the gulf of years
and inequalities that yawns between us--weighs like a lump of lead upon
me.

I am in constant fear of falling below his estimate of me. Before I
speak, I think whether what I am going to say will be worth saying, and,
as very few of my remarks come u