Older, more self-critical, they might have lost this sense of comradeship—might have gone over to the gray majority that insists only the past is picturesque, or that if any grace remains unto this day, it must needs be far removed from places we know well, precariously surviving under other skies, speaking an alien tongue. Those who would persuade us there is no scene in our every-day life but what is sordid, barren, or at best (and worst) meanly commonplace—stuff unfit for poetry or even for noble feeling—what do the carpers by such comment on our times but confess an intellect abject, slavish, blind. To find the beauty and the dignity that lie in the difficult familiar days that we ourselves are battling through, to detect high courage in the common speech, to get glimpses of the deathless face of romance as we go about the common streets, is merely to know life as it is, and yet to walk the modern world as gloriously companioned as any Viking or Hidalgo of the past. So true is early youth’s apprehension of these things, that not even Mrs. Mar could make wide enough for envy or embarrassment the gulf in the two girls’ minds between an Old World bandit chief, and a New World soldier of fortune. The transition, that to the sophisticated seems grotesque, between the Hernani of 1519 and the modern American pursuing perilous ways to the Pole—this feat was accomplished without misgiving, although in Saragossa, “on entend des fanfares éloignées,” and in Valdivia an indefatigable woman, on the other side of the street, was strumming the old tune, renamed, “The Boulanger March”; and now Mrs. Mar was beginning Scene III with an air of cold distrust, that Bella foresaw would mount by well-known degrees to a climax of scorn. The lady turned the page. “‘Mon âme Brûle—Eh! dis au volcan qu’il étouffe sa flamme,’— “How long are they going on like this, I wonder?” she interrupted herself to durchblätter the pages. “‘Ah! qui n’oublierait tout à cette voix celeste!’” And more fingering of the leaves. “Four more solid pages of this sort of thing,” she announced. “Well, if the rest of the world has stood it, I suppose we must.” And she went on— “‘Ta parole est un chant où rien d’humain ne reste—’” And on, in a measured staccato, exactly as if she were adding up a column of figures, or telling off yards of tape. “‘Doña Sol. Viens, ô mon jeune amant, Dans mes bras.’” Bella dropped the silver dragon, and with, “Wait, Mrs. Mar, _dearest_ Mrs. Mar!” she seized the book. “What’s the matter with you?” “This is _my_ part!” said Bella, shutting the volume convulsively. “I know it every bit.” “‘Voilà notre nuit de noces commencée! Je suis bien pâle, dis, pour une fiancée?’” And on to—