"I should love it!" Melissa replied. "I'm fond of my folks, of course, and I should be sorry to leave them; but I just love Europe. I shall never go again, though. I shall come right away back to Kansas City now, and keep store for father for the rest of my natural existence." "It seems hard," Bernard went on, musing, "that anybody like you, Melissa, with such a natural love of art and of all beautiful things,--anybody who can draw such sweet dreams of delight as those heads you showed us after Filippo Lippi, anybody who can appreciate Florence and Venice and Rome as you do,--should have to live all her life in a far Western town, and meet with so little sympathy as you're likely to find there." "That's the rub," Melissa replied, looking up into his face with such a confiding look. (If any pretty girl had looked up at ME like that, I should have known what to do with her; but Bernard was twenty-four, and young men are modest.) "That's the rub, Mr. Hancock. I like--well, European society so very much better. Our men are nice enough in their own way, don't you know; but they somehow lack polish--at least, out West, I mean, in Kansas City. Europeans may n't be very much better when you get right at them, perhaps; but on the outside, anyway to ME, they're more attractive somehow." There was another long pause, during which I felt as guilty as ever eavesdropper before me. Yet I was glued to the spot. I could hardly escape. At last Bernard spoke again. "I should like to have gone round with you on your tour, Melissa," he said. "I don't know Italy; I don't suppose by myself I could even appreciate it. But if YOU were by my side, you'd have taught me what it all meant; and then I think I might perhaps understand it." Melissa drew a deep breath. "I wish I could take it all over again," she answered, half sighing. "And I didn't see Naples, either. That was a great disappointment. I should like to have seen Naples, I must confess, so as to know I could at least in the end die happy." "Why do you go back?" Bernard asked, suddenly, with a bounce, looking down at that wee hand that trembled upon the taffrail. "Because I can't help myself," Melissa answered, in a quivering voice. "I should like--I should like to live always in England." "Have you any special preference for any particular town?" Bernard asked, moving closer to her--though, to be sure, he was very, very near already. "N--no; n--none in particular," Melissa stammered out, faintly, half sidling away from him. "Not Cambridge, for example?" Bernard asked, with a deep gulp and an audible effort. I felt it would be unpardonable for me to hear any more. I had heard already many things not intended for me. I sneaked off, unperceived, and left those two alone to complete that conversation.