She began to talk to me about mountains, about Switzerland, where she had been last spring, and I felt ashamed never to have been anywhere. Yet, while she was describing it, I had an instinct that I should not like Switzerland. By some chance I indeed pictured it very much as, later on, I was actually to find it. Katherine’s enthusiasm could not remove this conviction: in fact, what she said, secretly strengthened my idea that it must be an odious country, and, years later, amid all the showy banality of its picturesqueness, I remembered this particular walk, and my own beautiful dark country rose up before me, with its sombre hills, its dreamy, changing sky. But at the time I had nothing to say, I had no comparisons to make, I had seen nothing. “I should like to go to a big city like London or Paris,” I told her, “not to live there, but to see it.” “I don’t believe you’d like it.” “Why?” “I don’t know.... You’re so much a part of all this.” She glanced up at the hills. “Do _you_ like cities?” “Oh, I simply love them; but then I’m quite different.” “I’d like the picture galleries any way,” I declared. “Are you fond of pictures?” “I’ve not seen many――only reproductions.” “I’m fond of them too. There was a splendid picture in the Academy this year of a girl skating. She was holding a muff up to her face so that it covered her mouth and chin, but she was awfully pretty, and when you came into the room you would just think she was a real person. And the snow was so nice, with a sort of pink light on it. If you come over to London I’ll take you to see everything.” But again, just as in the case of Switzerland, my instinct told me I should detest this picture. For a moment I had a feeling of depression; it seemed to me of infinite importance that Katherine should like the things that I liked. “I don’t care for pretty pictures,” I said. “I hate everything pretty,” I went on almost angrily.