Neither! she wanted to scream. She missed Gilbert so much she could have burst. Everything here was so different, moving her in new and different ways, she wanted to wait for Gilbert, and to see it with him. It was as if she were holding part of herself back, saving it for when he’d be there with her. She felt that he would ground her, and through him she would really know things. She was not thinking how one sees things for the first time only once.

I’d like to see the hills, she said finally, wanting the exercise. It might help her sleep at night. She’d become so restless she wondered if she’d ever have a tranquil night’s sleep again.

On their way back, they stopped in Paris one last time, and enlisted a Monsieur Troyat who had done the Sedgwicks’ portraits to do theirs. Except that Mr. Eliot did not have time to sit — he was in Europe — and if he did need his portrait done, which he didn’t think, he could just as well have it executed in Boston. Mrs. Eliot had overbooked herself for fittings, and anyway preferred to let stand the portrait of her done at twenty, and Arthur said he wouldn’t be drawn until he was completely bald which he seemed to feel would not be in too long a time. Lilian was the only one to go for a sketch.

Monsieur Troyat sat her on a couch and gave her a diaphanous shawl to put over her shoulders. She watched his face as he drew, a tidy man with a pince-nez clipped to his nose and a beard. They spoke a bit about her getting married.

He is a nice boy? said Monsieur Troyat.

Oui, yes. Très gentil.

And do the tips of your fingers and the ends of your hairs tingle when you see him? He spoke like a strict instructor, emphatically, his hand always moving across his paper.

Lilian smiled politely.

Because there must be passion, he went on.

Lilian continued to look at the stuffed parrot he had ordered her to gaze at.

Very important for the passion, he said, nodding.

Lilian thought of her experience with passion, the sort that Monsieur Troyat was talking about, and knew that it was not as appealing as it sounded. She found her feelings for Gilbert Finch, and the certainty of him, to be far more satisfying, a better passion. Yes, she said.

For the man I mean, he said and looked at her with intensity, stopped in his sketching. To love a woman in whom I did not inspire passion would be an unbearable thing. He added quickly as he went back to the paper, I’d think.