Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking
many enquiries at once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about
each. She had a reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled
with motives. Formerly, when she came to Europe it was because she
wished to see it, but now, having already seen it, she had no such
excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend that the desire to examine
decaying civilizations had anything to do with her present enterprise;
her journey was rather an expression of her independence of the old
world than of a sense of further obligations to it. "It's nothing to
come to Europe," she said to Isabel; "it doesn't seem to me one
needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at home;
this is much more important." It was not therefore with a sense of
doing anything very important that she treated herself to another
pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully
inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her
knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to
be there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she
had a perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that.
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