Page 118 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

onoured, than he liked. This sensation, it must be added,
after he had spent a day or two in her company, sensibly
diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. ‘I don’t suppose
that you’re going to undertake to persuade me that you’re an
American,’ she said.
‘To please you I’ll be an Englishman, I’ll be a Turk!’
‘Well, if you can change about that way you’re very wel-
come,’ Miss Stackpole returned.
‘I’m sure you understand everything and that differences
of nationality are no barrier to you,’ Ralph went on.
Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. ‘Do you mean the for-
eign languages?’
‘The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit—the ge-
nius.’
‘I’m not sure that I understand you,’ said the correspon-
dent of the Interviewer; ‘but I expect I shall before I leave.’
‘He’s what’s called a cosmopolite,’ Isabel suggested.
‘That means he’s a little of everything and not much of
any. I must say I think patriotism is like charity—it begins
at home.’
‘Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole?’ Ralph
enquired.
‘I don’t know where it begins, but I know where it ends.
It ended a long time before I got here.’
‘Don’t you like it over here?’ asked Mr. Touchett with his
aged, innocent voice.
‘Well, sir, I haven’t quite made up my mind what ground
I shall take. I feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the jour-
ney from Liverpool to London.’

118 The Portrait of a Lady