ELLEN TERHUNE
511
hair and the green silk bow that she wore in her starched white collar
and that softened the squareness of her face. That was one curious
thing, I reflected as I was walking away from the house, about the effect
on American artists of studying abroad. They got in Europe a kind of
inoculation with the cultures of alien races which might give them the
illusion for a time that they were part of European culture, that, carried
along by its current, they had actually been merged in its waters. Bur
in ninety-nine cases this had never affected in any at all vital way the
native American base.
If
this base had no principle of growth of its own,
the inoculation simply wore off and left something that was flat, flat, flat.
I found that I was thinking of Ellen as if she had just come back
from Paris. In her case, of course, when France had worn off, she
had
had a base that sent up shoots. Yet there was something about those
iterated phrases, like a child's repeated sentence or the insurmountable
image of a mad person, that wasn't right, wasn't good.
I thought about Ellen often; I hoped she wasn't herself going mad.
I lried to call her a few weeks Tater, and they told me. the phone was out
of order.
I walked over that afternoon. The trees of Vallombrosa were quite
transformed with reds that were blazing or paling, full orange and
lemon-yellow, made richer by a slight autumn mist; and they were so
much in advance of the trees outside, which were only beginning to turn,
that I wondered whether the doctor's rare species were particularly sen–
sitive .to frost.
When I had almost reached the house, a girl on a bicycle shot by me,
coasting along the drive. She looked toward me when she had set her
bicycle against the latticed base of the piazza, and I felt that she expected
me to speak to her. But something in her face disconcerted me, and instead
of inquiring for Mrs. Soblianski, I asked-perhaps because Sigismund
seemed now so remote from that house in the presence of what I took to
be a relative and because at the same time it was incorrect to refer to
Ellen as "Miss"-whether "Mrs. Terhune" were at home. "Mrs. Terhune
is in the city," said the girl. She had green eyes that reminded me of
Ellen's and a rather pale indoor face. She wore a bang over her forehead
and short hair fluffed out behind, and she had on a white dress with a
long skirt and long sleeves and an enormous folded-over collar that com–
pletely enveloped her shoulders. I had been startled to note as she rode
by me that she was wearing long black stockings. Just the wrong thing
for hike-riding-what an arohaizing family they were! (I assumed this
was some cousin of Ellen's) : !t made me a little impatient.
"Won't you come in?" she said, as I stood searching her face rather
queerly. It was a serious intelligent face, and her manner was so mature
that it was difficult to tell her age, though she could not have been more
than thirteen or fourteen. I replied that I wouldn't come in but would
sit down on the porch for a moment. There were a pair of white wicker-
