She struck him for a moment as on the point, in answer to this, of breaking into impatience and declaring that his failure of comprehension need't matter to him. He had a glimpse thus of what he believed--that she truly would have wished him to take her conception on trust, and, as it were, for the love of her; to oblige her by adopting it, by accommodating himself blindly. Her courage, however, he made out, was insufficient for this, and the next minute she only did for herself what she could. "That's because I'm at the disadvantage, which I perfectly recognise, of not having practised what I preach--because I naturally, in my position, have everything against me." She smiled again for the vanity of the regret, but she went on. "If I could have known how I was now to feel I would never have gone." Ralph tried to follow her as if something might come of it. "But it took nothing less than your charming experience, I gather, to produce your actual attitude. You would have had no attitude without it. You had to qualify yourself for your remonstrance." He spoke so gravely that it made, in effect, for irony, and that in turn just visibly made her flinch. "Well, I do of course hold myself qualified, and of course I'm glad to be, on any terms. I give it to you at best as mere inevitable reaction, but the point I make is that as reaction it's final. One must choose at last"--she couldn't, he saw, but let herself go; "and I take up definitely with my own country. It's high time; here, _en fin de compte_, one can at least do or be something, show something, make something. To try and make something is at all events what's wanted of us, and even if we make nothing it's at least as good ta make it here on the spot as to go thousands of miles on as great a fool's errand. I want in short to be an American as other people are--well, whatever they are." Ralph turned it all over. "Yes, it's the new cry, and what can be more interesting than to hear it sounded more or less in French? It's recommended--for the 'upper classes,' and perhaps even beginning a little to be tried by them. It wouldn't take much," he continued, "to make me say that the day only _could_ inevitably come when it would be for its little hour the new pose." "I dare say indeed it wouldn't take much to make you say it," she returned; "and I've also seen the moment coming at which--_for_ the moment--you inevitably would. But I dare say you hold that the hour you speak of will pass: all the more reason therefore that I should make the most of it while it lasts. It may be only a dream, but the thing is--while one can--to keep dreaming." He looked at her in silence longer than he had done yet. "What it comes to then is that you'll never dream of me."