'Oh, indeed,' said Nan. 'I wish I had been in; I should like to have seen him in uniform.' That was all she said, and all she thought; for now there were far more serious things than ballrooms and young lieutenants occupying Nan's attention. She and her sisters were going abroad--she for the first time; and she was busy with foreign languages, and lives of the great painters, and catalogues, and guide-books, and dressing-cases. The world she hoped to plunge into on the following week was, in her imagination, composed of nothing but cathedrals and picture-galleries; and she could have wished that the picture-galleries might contain nothing but the labours of Botticelli and Andrea del Sarto. The clear ethereal beauty and tenderness of the one, the solemn thoughtfulness of the other: these were things that filled her mind with a mysterious gladness, as if something had been added to her own life. Rubens she cordially hated. Of Titian she had as yet seen hardly anything. At last the wonderful day of setting out arrived, and Mr. Tom graciously consented to accompany his sisters as far as Newhaven. It was towards the afternoon that they started, in an open carriage, the maid on the box beside the coachman. Tom was making facetious remarks about south-west gales, and his two elder sisters were angrily remonstrating with him. Nan was silent. She had not a thought for the ships and sailors out there, or for any pensive young officer bitterly saying to himself that out of sight was out of mind; and she had forgotten for a moment all about Singing Sal and her free-and-easy ways. Nan's mind was at this time filled with Dante, and Florence, and the young Raphael, and the Doge wedding the Adriatic, and Pompeii, and Savonarola, and goodness knows what else. When they reached Newhaven--when they forced her to descend from the carriage--her eyes had a bewildered look. She had not seen Newhaven at all. She had been watching the execution of Savonarola--she standing in the middle of the great crowd in a square in Florence. They stayed the night at the hotel at Newhaven. Next morning falsified all Mr. Tom's malicious forecasts; the weather was fine, and they had a smooth passage across. In due time they reached Paris. To Nan, Paris meant picture-galleries. The streets were new-looking, non-historical, filled with commonplace people; but in the picture-galleries she was with great names, in great times. 'Nan,' her sisters remonstrated, 'what is the use of dawdling over pictures like this? The Old Masters are all alike. There are plenty of Holy Families and broken-necked angels in England. Why don't you put off all this till you get back to the National Gallery?' Fortunately, Nan was the most biddable of companions. She seemed to be in dreamland. You could do what you liked with her if only you allowed her to gaze with her great eyes, and think, and be silent.