I went up to her to ask her the day before yesterday; I thought that the best way. I told her I wanted to know her better and would like to come and see her in her room—they tell me she has got a lovely one—and that if she had heard anything against me perhaps she’d tell me when I came. But she was more distant than ever and just turned it off; said she had never heard me mentioned and that her room was too small to receive visitors. I suppose she spoke the truth, but I’m sure she has some peculiar ground, all the same. She has got some idea; which I’ll die if I don’t find out soon—if I have to ask every one in the house. I never _could_ be happy under an appearance of wrong. I wonder if she doesn’t think me refined—or if she had ever heard anything against Bangor? I can’t think it’s that. Don’t you remember when Clara Barnard went to visit in New York, three years ago, how much attention she received? And you know Clara _is_ Bangor, to the soles of her shoes. Ask William Platt—so long as he isn’t native—if he doesn’t consider Clara Barnard refined. Apropos, as they say here, of refinement, there’s another American in the house—a gentleman from Boston—who’s just crammed with it. His name’s Mr. Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name I think) and he’s about thirty years old. He’s rather small and he looks pretty sick; he suffers from some affection of the liver. But his conversation leads you right on—they _do_ go so far over here: even our people seem to strain ahead in Europe, and perhaps when I get back it may strike you I’ve learned to keep up with them. I delight to listen to him anyhow—he has such beautiful ideas. I feel as if these moments were hardly right, not being in French; but fortunately he uses a great many French expressions. It’s in a different style from the dazzle of Mr. Verdier—not so personal, but much more earnest: he says the only earnestness left in the world now is French. He’s intensely fond of pictures and has given me a great many ideas about them that I’d never have gained without him; I shouldn’t have known how to go to work to strike them. He thinks everything of pictures; he thinks we don’t make near enough of them. They seem to make a good deal of them here, but I couldn’t help telling him the other day that in Bangor I really don’t think we do. If I had any money to spend I’d buy some and take them back to hang right up. Mr. Leverett says it would do them good—not the pictures, but the Bangor folks (though sometimes he seems to want to hang _them_ up too). He thinks everything of the French, anyhow, and says we don’t make nearly enough of them. I couldn’t help telling him the other day that they certainly make enough of _themselves_. But it’s very interesting to hear him go on about the French, and it’s so much gain to me, since it’s about the same as what I came for. I talk to him as much as I dare about Boston, but I do feel as if this were right down wrong—a stolen pleasure.